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Bi^Centennial 

(Ebrist Cburcb 

0>b«abelpbia 

1695=1895 



MEMORIAL 



OF THE 



Two Hundredth Anniversary 



OF THE 



FOUNDING 






/ 



CHRIST CHURCH 



PHILADELPHIA. 



169^-189^. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
PUBLISHED BY THE CHRIST CHURCH HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

i8g6. 




hiss 



MEMORIAL 

OF THE 

Two Hundredth Anniversary 

OF THE FOUNDING OF 

CHRIST CHURCH 

PHILADELPHIA, 

BEING A RECORD OF SERVICES AND OF SER- 
MONS AND ADDRESSES 



The Rev. WILLIAM J. SEABURY, D.D., 
Professor in the General Theological Seminary, New York. 

The Rev. C. ELLIS STEVENS, LL.D., D.C.L., 
Rector of the Parish. 

CHARLES J. STILLE, LL.D., 
Ex-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. 

The Rt. Rev. LEIGHTON COLEMAN, D.D., LL.D., 
Bishop of Delaware. 

The rt. Rev. O. W. WHITAKER, D.D., 
Bishop of the Diocese. 

The Rev. J. LEWIS PARKS, D.D., 
Rector of St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia. 

The Rt. Rev. WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., 
Bishop of Iowa, and Histographer of the Church in the United States. 

The Rev. WILLIAM B. BODINE, D.D., 
Rector of the Church of the Saviour, Philadelphia. 

The rt. Rev. CORTLANDT WHITEHEAD, D.D., 
Bishop of Pittsburgh. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

published by the CHRIST CHURCH HISTORICAI, ASSOCIATION. 

1S96. 



PRESS OF 

P. C. STOCKHAUSEN, 
53-55 N. 7th St., Phila. 



INTRODUCTION. 



^tVHRIST CHURCH, Philadelphia, having its potential 
^ J origin in the requirement of the charter of Penn- 
sylvania granted by King Charles II to William 
Penn which provided for services of the Church of Eng- 
land, dates its actual beginning from 1695. On November 
15th of that year, the ground was purchased on which 
stands the present church edifice. The purchase was 
made by Joshua Carpenter, who, in a deed dated Jul)^ 
20th following, " acknowledged and declared " that his 
name was used in the deeds of purchase by " the special 
nomination and appointment of the community of the said 
church, and for their use and benefit," and that part of the 
lot of land was intended for a cemetery or churchyard, and 
that the church and the premises were to be perpetually 
appropriated and used for the public worship of God, and 
for the better instruction of the people inhabiting and to 
inhabit in Philadelphia, in the one Christian religion as it is 
professed in the Church of England, and established by the 
laws of the realm, and to no other uses whatsoever. Ser- 
vices according to the Book of Common Prayer had already 
been begun ; and churchmen appealed for their rights of 
'worship. One of the leading spirits in the embyro congrega- 
tion was Colonel Robert Quary, whose gift of altar vessels 
of silver is still constantly used in the parish. With encour- 
agement from Francis Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, 
advance was made and the first church edifice was built 
of substantial brick. The movement attracted the atten- 
tion of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of 
Eondon, and notably of the Rev. Thomas Bray, D. D., the 
earnest friend of the Anglican Church in the colonies. 
At the instance of the latter, Bishop Conipton of London 



2 Bi-Ceiitennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

sent over the first priest, the Rev. Thomas Clayton. The 
present, which is the second edifice of the parish, dates 
from so early as 1727. 

The church thus founded has become the mother church 
not only of Philadelphia, but of the dioceses of Pennsylva- 
nia. Nay, more. Located in a city which grew to be the 
colonial metropolis, and which eventually became the first 
settled capital of the new nation, Christ Church has a 
unique relation to the formative events of American national 
history. As the church of Washington, Franklin and other 
of our heroes it is endeared to all Americans. Churchmen 
may well be pardoned a sense of pride that a parish of the 
Church is so richly associated with patriotic memories. But 
churchmen cannot forget that here occurred events notable 
in Church as well as State. For in Christ Church, our 
branch of the Catholic Church which is in communion 
with the archepiscopal see of St. Augustine, was definitely 
and finally organized into the Church in the United States. 
Here the Constitution and the Prayer Book of the American 
Church were adopted. 

The Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, was, not unnat- 
urally, an event of interest to Philadelphians, to Penn- 
sylvanians, and to churchmen throughout the United 
States. The press of Philadelphia and of the country gave 
notable attention to the octave of services which constitu- 
ted the celebration. The sermons and addresses were rich 
with historic reference and illustration ; and the interest felt 
in the occasion was so wide and so deep, that a general 
demand arose for the preservation of a permanent record. 

Through the Christ Church Historical Association these 
pages are ofiered to the public as such record. We may all 
iinite in hope and expectation, that through the blessing of 
the God of our fathers, the ancient parish will continue and 
increase its usefulness to future generations, and come in 
time to celebrate many another centennial anniversary. 

C. E. S. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, 

PHILADELPHIA, 

1895. 



PROCEEDINGS OF SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17. 




^N Sunday morning, November 17th, at 11 o'clock, 
the first of the octave of services in commemora- 
tion of the two hundredth anniversary of Christ 
Church was held in the church. There were present the 
Rector, the Rev. C. Ellis Stevens, LD. D., D. C. L. ; the 
Rector's Assistant, the Rev. E. Gaines Nock ; the preacher 
for the occasion, the Rev. William J. Seabury, D. D., Pro- 
fessor of Ecclesiastical Polity in the General Theological 
vSeminary, New York, great-grandson of the Rt. Rev. 
Samuel Seabury, D. D., first Bishop of Connecticut, 
Presiding Bishop of the Church in the United States ; and 
the celebrant, the Rev. James Alan Montgomery, Assistant 
Minister of St. Peter's Church, son of Thomas H. Mont- 
gomery, Esq. (long a warden of Christ Church), and great- 
great-grandson of the Rt. Rev. William White, D. D., 
first Bishop of Pennsylvania, Presiding Bishop of the 
Church in the United States. The Rector and his Assist- 
ant conducted the morning service. The Rev. Mr. Mont- 
gomery, as representing Bishop White, celebrated the Holy 
Eucharist, assisted by the Rector, and by the Rev. Dr. 
Seabury as representing Bishop Seabury. The congrega- 
tion on this, as at nearly all public services of the octave, 
filled the venerable edifice to its utmost capacity. The 
sermon of the Rev. Dr. Seabur)' was as follows : 



4 Bi-Centen7tial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

SERMON OF THE REV. DR. SEABURY. 



All things are double one against another, and He hath made 
nothing imperfect. 

One thing establisheth the good of another, and who shall be filled 
with beholding His Glory? — Ecclus. xlii, 24, 25. 

In extolling the glories of the Almighty, the wise Author 
of this wonderful book here directs our attention to a cer- 
tain characteristic of the Divine wisdom, manifested in 
His creation and ordering of the Universe. The perfec- 
tion of His work is shown in the relation of the objects of 
creative power to each other. There is nothing in the 
ordering of the Divine wisdom which works alone and 
by itself, but each operation involves and depends upon 
some other operation which is essential to its completeness 
and perfection. All things are double, one against another, 
and one thing establisheth the good of another. 

Either by way of harmony or of contrast, the perfect 
effect of the Divine wisdom is shown by this correlation 
of operation. lyight and darkness, summer and winter, 
seed-time and harvest, succeed one another, not merely in 
sequence of time but because, in the Divine wisdom, 
neither could produce its full effect for us without its rela- 
tion to the other. In the natural world this relation and 
fitness of things to each other is wonderfully manifested ; 
and that is found to be a pervading order which is expressed 
in the highest act of creative power, when it is said that 
" in the image of God made He man — male and female 
created He them." 

So in the realm of abstract truth, whether we have 
regard to philosophy or morals or religion, we find the same 
correlation — insomuch that no principle can be understood 
or applied without the due consideration of some other prin- 
ciple by which its operation is limited or qualified. There 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Cicurch, Philadelphia. 5 

are principles which may seem to the thoughtless to be 
merely contradictory or mutually destructive. Yet the 
wise can see that each is infallibly true, and must be with- 
out question accepted : and thus he is lifted up to adore 
the wisdom which is shown in the preservation of that 
balance of the two which produces results which either by 
itself would prevent. 

And when we look at the order of society, or of any 
department of society which is established by the will of 
man, we find the wisdom of such order most manifest when 
most regard is paid to the preservation of this balance in 
the application to human action of those principles which, 
however they may seem to work in opposite directions, 
are yet in themselves equally important to human welfare. 
Such administration is, after all, but the application to the 
needs of men at any given time and place of those natural 
principles of justice which, by the Divine wisdom, have 
been made essential in the relations of men to each other 
— for here also He hath made all things double one against 
another, and one thing establisheth the good of another. 

And so with regard to that department of society which 
we call the Church. The Divine mercy has made provi- 
sion for the association of men in a covenant relation with 
the Father, based upon the merits of the Atoning Sacrifice 
of the Son : and by the grace of the Holy Spirit men are 
enabled to keep that covenant and be accepted in the 
Beloved. To men thus associated are revealed those prin- 
ciples of truth and order which are essential to the preserva- 
tion of their privilege ; and all that the will of man can 
do in the formation and regulation of the several parts of 
such association is so to arrange the system in which they 
work as best to ensure the application of these pre-existing 
principles. In other words, while we cannot speak of the 
Church in any day or place as established by the will of 



6 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

man, because it is already established by the Divine will ; 
yet we may regard the form and manner of administration 
as the proper object of human care and authority, and may 
allow that there is a certain range or scope of action in 
which men of different times and places may apply the 
principles which they have received to hold, and pass over 
to succeeding generations. A nd as there is alv/ays in these 
principles a certain relation of truth to counter truth,' so 
there will always be among men who seek to apply these 
principles a proneness to dwell, some upon the one and 
some upon the other aspect of the truth : and thus there 
will always be the need of that wisdom in the counsels of 
the Church which can reflect the wisdom of its Divine 
Founder in the preservation of that just balance of prin- 
ciples which is essential to the perpetuation of right rule. 
No reflecting person can consider the Church in whose 
sacred rites we join to-day, without perceiving the mani- 
festation of this wisdom in a remarkable degree. The 
great principles of Divine grace and human free will ; of 
the need of faith and the use of reason ; of Sacramental 
grace and personal sanctity ; of external evidence and 
inward assurance ; of the sufSciency of scripture and the 
completeness of the traditional faith ; of the grace of the 
Holy Spirit in ordination and the inward movement of 
him who comes to seek it by the same Spirit ; of the 
Divine gift in Confirmation and the renewal of the human 
covenant ; of regeneration in Baptism and the evil infec- 
tion which remaineth even in them that are regenerate ; 
of the One Oblation of Christ, once offered, and the con- 
tinual presentation of that Offering by means of His own 
appointment, — such principles as these may serve as in- 
stances of the faithfulness with which the Church maintains 



1 Cf. " Truth and Counter Truth ;" an admirable tractate by Rev. 
Thos. Richey, D.D. 



Bi-Centemiial of Christ Clncrch^ Philadelphia. 7 

the just balance of correlative truths ; swerving neither to 
the one side nor to the other by an exclusive tenure of one 
truth without regard to that which has been made double 
over against it. Herein, too, lies the reason and the 
measure, of what is sometimes, with a misleading applica- 
tion, called the comprehensiveness of the Church : for the 
Church is rightly to be regarded as comprehensive, not 
because it insists upon no particular doctrine or principle 
of truth, and receives within its communion and orders all 
who would profess or teach whatever may seem to them to 
be truth ; but because it maintains truth in its entirety, 
and, recognizing the equal truth of correlative principles, 
will not exclude those whose perception may not enable 
them fully to adjust every truth to its counter-truth, but 
receives such with the firmness of a true teaching, coupled 
with the charity of the hope of their ultimate acceptance 
of all its lessons. 

If such be the wisdom which the Church has learned 
from the workings of its Divine Founder, may we not 
justly admire the application of this wisdom wherever in 
measure and degree we may observe it, and be ready both 
to emulate the example which is thus presented to us, and 
to be thankful for that ordering of the Divine Providence 
which has made it manifest ? 

It is not the least of all the glories of this venerable fane 
which it is our present purpose to commemorate, that from 
it have proceeded many influences which have helped to 
establish the Church in this country in the possession of 
that fulness or completeness of truth and order which makes 
it especially worthy of our affectionate admiration, and 
which have resulted from the harmonious combination of 
opposing principles. It is in connection at least with the 
history of this church that such harmonious combination 
has been accomplished, and we may fitly embrace the occa- 



8 Bi-Ce7itennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

sion to recall the honour which is due to the place as being 
eminently distinguished b)' so remarkable an association. 

The service in which we are engaged to-day introduces 
us to a very wide range of commemorative thoughts. 
Beginning with the foundation of the parish in 1695, when 
the re-settlement of 1688 in England had just prepared the 
way for the sturdier growth, if not for the planting, of con- 
stitutional ideas which had a marked effect upon the mould- 
ing of both Church and State in the colonies ; continuing 
through the struggle for existence, amidst prejudice and op- 
position which had almost reduced the Church to extinction; 
watching over and fostering the growth and expansion of the 
Church under the new relations in which our Revolution 
had placed it, including within its communion and counsels 
many of the most eminent in civil affairs ; and standing for 
half a century', through its connection with the patriarchal 
White, in a relation no less than that of a Canterbury to the 
whole of this great American province ; Christ Church 
touches in its history, at one point or another, almost every 
vital interest that belongs to us as churchmen or as citizens. 

It has appeared to me an act of most gracious courtesy, as 
well as of suggestive significance, on the part of the authori- 
ties of this church, to include with their proposed com- 
memoration the name of Bishop Seabur}^, who lived remote 
from this place, and whose line of life touched that of this 
parish only on one notable occasion. The connection neces- 
sarily suggests the bearing of the histor\' of this church 
upon that which is of common interest to the Church of the 
whole countr}^ I ask, therefore, to be permitted to select 
from the great range of associations which flow out from the 
life of this venerable parish one which relates especially 
neither to the beginning nor to the later years of your his- 
tory, but which brings more prominently into view the 
period midwaj- between these — a period for which the times 



Bi-Centen?tial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 9 

which are in God's hands had been preparing from the 
beginning, and whose effects upon subsequent histor}' have 
been abundant and abiding. 

In this sacred place, in the year of our Lord 1789, was 
organized the first General Convention, properly so called, 
consisting of representatives of the Church in several States 
of the Civil Union, duly authorized and empowerd to confirm 
and ratify a general constitution, respecting both doctrine 
and discipline, for the use and benefit and obligation of 
every Church in a State which was represented in such 
Convention and acceded to its authority/ 

Other meetings of clergy and laity from different States 
to confer in regard to an ecclesiastical union had been held 
between 1784 and 1786 ; but those who attended such meet- 
ings, while they called them Conventions, as in a lax sense 
they might, were not possessed of the right to bind their 
constituents. All that they agreed upon had to be referred 
back for the consent of the Church in the States repre- 
sented, and therefore their measures rested upon recommen- 
dation only, and had no authority. 

In the Convention of 1789 the case was different; and 
what was there determined was agreed upon and ratified 
with all the authority which the Church in the States could 
confer. Nor was there any other authority by which the 
common Constitution could be made effectually binding 
upon the Church in any State, except what might be derived 
from its own consent and ratification, thus expressed. That 
the Church existing in the several States composing the 
Civil Union was the same Church which had existed in the 
colonies before the Revolution, and that so existing in the 
colonies, it was a part of the Church of England, and as 
such under obligation of conformity to the general princi- 
ples of faith and order which underlie the administration 



^ Bioron's Journals, pp. 26-4S. 



lo Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy PhiladelpJiia. 

of the Catholic Church of Christ, is true. But whether 
those general principles were to be administered by the 
Church in each State for itself alone, or, for that matter, in 
lesser or other groups, who could authoritatively determine ? 
The only common bond, so far as external government was 
concerned, in the Church in the colonies had been found 
in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, who repre- 
sented the oversight of the English episcopate. When, in 
the course of Divine Providence, these States became free 
and independent that jurisdiction in fact was no longer 
exercised. During the war it was in abeyance ; at the con- 
clusion of the war it was practically abandoned. The re- 
strlt was the existence of a number of congregations, with 
the presbyters respectively in charge of them, living in the 
communion of the Church of England, adhering to its faith 
and order, but without the possession of the episcopate, 
and so without that common bond which would have suf- 
ficed to keep them in union with each other. Until the 
episcopate could be supplied to them, and so "locally- 
adapted " as to ensure their unity, what hindered these 
clergy and congregations from falling into confusion and 
anarchy ? What hindered them, as Bishop White puts it, 
from " taking different courses in different places as to all 
things not necessary to salvation? which might have pro- 
duced different liturgies, different articles, episcopacy from 
different sources, and, in short, very many churches, instead 
of one extending over the United States." ' 

Shall we attribute our deliverance from these evils to the 
good sense of the people ; to the strength of the persuasion 
of the moral unity of those who, although politically dis- 
tinct, were yet of one blood, of one language, and of one 
faith ; to the wise statesmanship of noble spirits, and, pre- 
eminent among these, of Bishop White himself? Yes, 



1 Bishop White's Memoirs, p. gS. Ed. 1836. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy PhiladelpJiia. ii 

truly, to each of these in its own degree. Yet all these are 
but secondary causes, operating under the will of that 
Divine Providence which had prepared the field for the 
Avork which was to be done in it. The course of history 
which had given to each colony its chartered right of 
individual existence, to each State its independent freedom 
and sovereignty, had enabled the members of the Church 
in every State to realize their unity with each other, and 
so to recognize one obvious restraint upon individualism. 
The course of history, enacted before their own eyes, and 
in great part by their own agency, which had formed ONE 
out of MANY, demonstrating the possibility of unity of 
authority, consistently with the reservation of a severalty 
of right, had shown the way for the members of the 
Church in any State to establish a community of interest 
and authority with the Church in every other State, with- 
out forfeiting or merging its own individuality. So the 
wisdom which hath made all things double one against 
another, taught our predecessors in the Church to bring 
order out of chaos, or rather to prevent chaos by the 
preservation of order, by walking straight in the path 
■which the Divine Providence had prepared for them : and 
in the absence of the episcopate, which had been tempor- 
arily withdrawn from them, to follow the principles and 
precedents of association which were directly before them. 
And while the Church in each State preserved its individ- 
ual right and authority over its own members, it joined 
with others in constituting a common form of government 
which should operate with direct authority upon every 
individual member of all. The episcopate was no more 
disregarded, or intended to be disregarded, in the system 
than the matter of the faith itself; but it was not the epis- 
copate which produced this union. Without the previous 
operation of the episcopate, the Church in these States 



12 Bi-Centeiinial of Owist Chiirch^ Philadelphia. 

could never have existed. Without its subsequent opera- 
ation the Church in these States could not have continued 
to exist. But in the Providence of God the episcopate, as 
such, was not a factor in the production of that ecclesi- 
astical union which made ONE out of MANY in the 
constitution of the Church existing in the States thus 
associated. What established that ecclesiastical union 
was the voluntary and federative action of the Church in 
those States by their duly authorized representatives who 
came together here in 1789 ; and the means by which they 
accomplished that result was the adoption of a written 
Constitution — one great act — one grand bond of perpetual 
union, whose several parts can never be anything but com- 
ponents of one entirety, no matter with how many sibilants 
its name may be stigmatized. The mind which was used 
by God's Providence for the conception of this plan, and 
which was enabled by God's grace to be chiefly instrumen- 
tal in its accomplishment was that of the then Rector of 
Christ Church. May his memory' be forever blessed, and 
may this great memorial of him be in substance forever 
preserved, and defended from all things which are not 
legitimately deduced from the principles involved in it. 

I said that the episcopate, as such, was not a factor in 
the production of this union, but of course I shall not be 
understood as saying that bishops had no part in the estab- 
lishment of it — much less that the right and authority of 
their order was excluded by it. 

When the Constitution was adopted in August, 1789, 
there were bishops in two of the Churches engaged in the 
union, viz.: of Pennsylvania and New York. When it was 
adopted, as amended, in October of the same year, there 
were bishops in three of the Churches so concerned, viz. : 
of Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York. In the 
draft Constitution of 17S5 and 1786 provision was made 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 13 

for the membership in the Convention of the bishop in 
every State in which one should be consecrated and settled. 
In the Constitution of 1789, provision was made for the 
formation of a separate Episcopal House, when there should 
be three or more bishops. Their connection with the sys- 
tem was contemplated by those who formed it from the 
beginning : but in this formation the contemplation was 
as of the future, and not as of the present ; and naturally 
it underwent a process of development in which the epis- 
copal influence and position attained more just proportion 
to the whole. The germinal idea of the whole system was 
in fact conceived, and to some extent elaborated, by Dr. 
White, on the supposition of the impossibility of obtaining 
bishops : in which supposed necessity, and during its con- 
tinuance, their place was to be supplied by temporary sub- 
stitutes. When the necessity imagined was proved not to 
exist, this feature of course was abandoned ; but so far as 
the union of the Churches in the States, and the applica- 
tion of the authority of all to the members of each was 
involved in the system, it was a matter apart from and 
independent of episcopal influence and action. 

Naturally under these circumstances, when that came to 
be realized which had all along been anticipated, there 
were serious questions to be answered, and, indeed, 
momentous issues to be settled. 

There was here an epoch in the history of the Church. 
Never in the whole course of that history had such an 
event occurred as that the clergy and laity of a whole 
country should undertake the process of association, con- 
stituting an organic unity of administration for themselves, 
without bishops — upon whom as the successors of the 
Apostles devolve the right and the duty of maintaining 
and perpetuating such organic unity. Such a position 
might find precedent, to be sure, in communities detached 



14 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

from the body of the Church to which they belonged, and 
withdrawn from the episcopal communion and regimen. 
But such is not the case here presented. These men were 
still within the episcopal communion : and that they were 
not still under episcopal oversight resulted from no fault 
or intention of their own. They felt themselves obliged 
to do, so far as they could, of their own motion, that which 
had they been duly supplied with bishops it would doubt- 
less not have occurred to them to do. And seeing that, in 
what they did, they intruded upon no spiritual function of 
the Apostolic Office, nor laid unlawful hands upon what 
the Divine Founder of the Church had kept within the 
gift of His own consecrated succession, I humbly conceive 
that they were called of God to do what they did. 

Known unto God are all His works. We are fain to 
lament the failure of the Church of England to supply 
the episcopate to these colonies. There is just ground of 
complaint, for many reasons and in several points of view. 
But when men will not do the right which they ought and 
which there seems no sufficient reason to avoid, we must 
be content to believe that some reason exists in the Divine 
wisdom which prevents the accomplishment by the Divine 
Providence of that which is simply and in itself good. 
Is it not obvious, as we now look back upon the colonial 
period, and the period of organization which it introduced, 
that if England had sent us the bishops whom we had a 
right to have it would have prevented, if not destroyed, 
the opportunity which the Revolution brought to us? 
Had there been so much as one bishop exercising through- 
out the colonies that oversight which had belonged to the 
Bishop of London, and succeeding to his jurisdiction, he 
would have brought with him and perpetuated more or 
less of that association with temporal power and rule which 
has always been the bane of the episcopate since the time 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 15 

of Constantine. And there would have been the further 
consequence of the combination or fusion of the whole 
number of his followers into a single community, so that 
there could be no probable discrimination of them into 
various constituencies, such as now is, and from the begin- 
ning has been the safeguard of our system against the 
arbitrary power, as well of popular majorities as of official 
action. Now, by the blessing of God, having endured the 
discipline of His temporary restraint of privilege, we have 
not only to be thankful for a " free, valid, and purely 
ecclesiastical episcopacy," but also for such a distribution 
of power as furnishes the most salutary possible check upon 
the tyrannous application of the common authority to the 
individual Christian. 

The ordeal of those who made the epoch, however, was 
very great ; and it is not easy for us to understand all that 
they felt. In regard to this matter of the episcopate and 
its place in the system, it is manifest that there were two 
ideas ; and if one was not exactly double against the other 
in the true sense of those words, at least one established 
the good of the other. 

There has been floating in the minds of many since the 
Reformation the idea that the episcopate, however it may 
be desirable, is not necessary to the being of the Church. 
In such minds — I speak of those who accept, and not who 
reject episcopacy — there is apt to be present, with more or 
less vividness, the vision of a case in which episcopacy 
cannot be had : and they found a question upon this as to 
the propriety of insisting upon that as necessary, which in 
a case of necessity mvist be dispensed with. It may be 
safely said that no such case has ever arisen, or can arise, 
except under the most limited and transient circumstances, 
not affecting the perpetuity of the order. But perhaps 
there never were better grounds for the apprehension that 



i6 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

this anticipated exigency had arrived than there were at the 
time now under consideration. 

The idea, which is the antithesis of this, is that the epis- 
copate, since it is necessary to the being of the Church, 
cannot fail : and the working of these two ideas is well 
illustrated in this period. While there were some that 
took pains to provide against the contingency of the failure, 
or of a still indefinite postponement, there were others that 
rested not until they had taken effectual means to prevent 
that failure. Hence came to pass that difference of opinion 
in regard to the propriety and feasibility of the organization 
whose consummation is now commemorated, which was so 
quaintly and happily expressed by Bishop White when he 
said that, while it was maintained by some that we should 
" first have an head, and then proceed to regulate the body."^ 
It was rejoined by others, " Let us gather the scattered 
limbs, and then let the head be super-added." The latter 
counsel prevailed in the Middle and Southern States ; the 
former was acted upon by Connecticut, and sustained in 
the other Eastern States. Immediately upon the first 
tidings of peace, the clergy of Connecticut took their 
stand, and believing that the causes which had hindered 
the gift of the episcopate were now removed, made choice 
of a presbyter for that promotion ; and before the last of 
the retreating forces had left the coast Dr. Seabury had 
sailed for England in quest of consecration. This action 
took place in March, 1783, a year before the first step 
toward the gathering of the scattered limbs had been 
taken. The consecration, as you know, was not obtained 
in England, but after a patient waiting of sixteen months 
in that country, it was obtained from the bishops of the 
Catholic remainder of the ancient Church of Scotland, as 



Bp. White's Memoirs, p. 9S. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 17 

they pathetically styled themselves. The consequences of 
this consecration, far-reaching in many respects, most 
directly affected the organization under consideration : for 
first, it demonstrated the possibility of consecration, and 
thus removed from the weak in this country and the politic 
in England, the excuse for assuming the necessity of doing 
without bishops ; and secondly, it crj^stallized the Diocesan 
State idea, and led to the conspicuous manifestation of the 
federative character of the ecclesiastical union, by pre- 
senting the spectacle of a complete Church within one 
State, voluntarily and upon conditions acceding to the 
Constitution already adopted by others for their common 
government. 

And the combination of this episcopacy with that after- 
wards obtained from the English bishops, united in one 
the sometime divergent lines of the Scotch and English 
successions, and welded these twain, which had long been 
one against the other, into an indissoluble unity in this 
country, which was not without its healing effect in the 
lands from which they came. 

But the wisdom which hath made all things double, one 
against another, and in which one thing establisheth the 
good of another, guided our forefathers most effectually in' 
respect to the balance attained in our system of the two 
correlative principles of the authority and the duty of 
rulers. Perhaps better words might be used to denote 
these two principles, but I can think of no others more apt. 
It is incident to the possession of power that there should 
be a tendency to a tyrannical abuse of it. It is incident to 
the rightful resistance of tyranny, that there should be a 
tendency to the rejection of lawful authority. The battle 
has been fought all along through the ages, and must be 
fought while human nature lasts. Kappy are those who 
live under the needful restraints of a just authority, and 



1 8 Bi-Ceniennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

who can retain their own just right of freedom, without 
depriving others of their just right to rule. 

You know how largely this battle has been concerned 
with questions of episcopal power. I need not recite to 
you the stories of the strife of Investitures, of Puritanical 
protests against Prelatical pretensions, of the apprehension 
and dread of the introduction of the episcopate into this 
country, the intensity of which was not the least of the 
moving causes of the Revolution which produced our 
independence. I need only point out to you that, in the 
Providence of God, it came to pass here that the Church 
found itself under the shelter of a civil power, which, for 
the first time since Constantine embraced Christianity, 
declined — either on the plea of conscience or of policy — 
to meddle with the affairs of the Church, and assumed an 
attitude altogether external to it. And it was the very 
basis of this civil system of which the members of this 
Church were a part, that a just government must steady 
itself by the consent of the governed. The statesmanlike 
perception of Bishop White, and those who were associated 
with him, divined the bearing of these facts upon the needs 
of the Church, and seizing the principles involved in them 
they embedded them in the verj' foundation of the system 
which they established. Thenceforth the laity of the 
Church exercised for themslves the powers in which 
Christian princes had before acted as their representatives, 
and thenceforth the divinely constituted authority of the 
Apostolic Office is administered under the divinely imposed 
limitation of the duty of consultation with inferior Orders 
and laity ; which involves, in all matters pertaining to 
jurisdiction, as distinguished from order, the correlation of 
the principles of a supreme authority derived from God 
and not from the people, and of the right of the people to 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 19 

formulate their own consent in lawful ways to measures to 
which they are to be required to yield obedience. 

In the settlement of this Constitution it was one of the 
most important of the steps to be taken that proper pro- 
vision should be made for the continuance of a common 
form of worship, and a commonly accepted statement of 
those principles of faith and doctrine which worship in- 
volves and implies. It was, indeed, the most important 
step which could be taken. If nothing else had been ac- 
complished, the adoption, for perpetual use, of the Book 
of Common Prayer, with all the principles of faith and 
order which are embodied in it, would have sufficed to 
establish the union on the soundest and most enduring 
foundation. 

It is well known that the Book of Common Pra5'er was 
originally the result of an endeavor to establish the uni- 
formity of the Divine worship among a people who were 
accustomed in various places to various uses. It is, perhaps, 
not so generally known that there was some reason to 
apprehend in the origin of the American system, that the 
custom of various uses in different places might again pre- 
vail. The Proposed Book, the result of a revision at the 
meeting of clerical and lay delegates in 1785, was set 
forth by that meeting as a provisional use ; and, being 
published in 1786, was by the delegates in that year sanc- 
tioned until more authoritative provision should be made. 
At the Convocation in Connecticut in the same year Bishop 
Seabur}- set forth a Communion ofiice, recommending it to 
the Episcopal congregations in that State, provision having 
been previously made for such changes in other parts of 
the services as had appeared to be needed.^ In both of 
these directions much more was contemplated than the 



1 Cf. Rev. Dr. Samuel Hart's Historical Sketch in his edition of Bp. 
Seabury's Communion Office. 



20 Bi-Centetmial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

mere adaptation of the English book to American con- 
ditions, and in different ways it was sought to improve the 
occasion by what were respectively regarded as beneficial 
changes. It was the privilege of the General Convention 
of 1789, assembled with power to ratify a book which 
would be accepted as authoritative by the Churches in the 
several States, and including in its counsels the sanction 
of the episcopate, without which no liturg}- could have 
ecclesiastical force, to determine the unifonn and common 
manner of public worship, and to recognize the principles 
of faith and order which the right conduct of that worship 
involved. From this great act and, as it were, from under 
the shadow of this holy place have flowed out, as from a 
well of living water, those blessed and refreshing streams 
which have ever since satisfied devout souls that have been 
athirst for God in every part of this vast land and through- 
out the world in which its missions ha\-e spread. I may 
not enlarge upon the blessedness of this Divinely aided 
act. I would only be permitted to point out that here also 
we find the traces of that Divine wisdom which hath made 
all things double one against another, and hath made one 
thing establish the good of another. 

For in worship, as in other provisions of the Divine will 
for man, there are two ideas not so much contradictory as 
complementary of each other ; and these indicate principles 
in the proper balance of which only can right be found. 
The direct uplifting of the soul to God is the essence of all 
worship, and that only which makes the outward expres- 
sion sincere and effectual in the individual case. But the 
outward expression, besides being the necessar}- attribute 
of a common or public worship, is also the natural means 
by which the inward consciousness of adoration is enlivened 
and made effective. 

In the reaction from excessive formalism which followed 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 2i 

the Reformation, the inward or subjective idea acquired 
undue inportance in the minds of men, and it was forgotten 
or overlooked that, in those primitive ages of the Church, 
in which the inward spirit had been most devout, the out- 
ward manifestations of it were most rich and exuberant. 
Particularly in regard to the Holy Eucharist — the central 
point of all worship — was this true : and the tendency 
brought with it the obscuring of all conceptions of its 
character except such as were connected with the exercise 
of the inward emotions. Its refreshment was in the men- 
tal remembrance of the Atonement of the Redeemer ; its 
character of worship was not in the act itself, but in the 
thankful sentiments which the observance of the act 
engendered. So it was not strange that the sacrificial 
aspect of the Eucharist, as being the means appointed by 
Christ Himself for the presentation of His Sacrifice for a 
perpetual memorial to the Father, should be lost sight of, 
and other aspects of that Holy Sacrament, just enough in 
themselves, should alone be considered. 

It was the recovery of the true balance of these ideas, 
by the restoration of the oblation and invocation in the 
Eucharistic office, which was brought about by the adop- 
tion, in this convention, of the Prayer of Consecration, as 
it had been derived, through Bishop Seabury's office, from 
the Scottish Church, which had adhered in substance to 
that primitive and Catholic form, the revival of which had 
been among the glories of the Reformation in the first 
Prayer Book of Edward VI, but which, under Puritanical 
pressure, had been pared to the quick in the second book 
of that reign. For this blessed restoration we are, under 
God, chiefly indebted to Bishop Seabury, who had pre- 
served, and shaped, and exemplified, and urged with 
respectful insistence this venerable and sacred tradition. 
But in this place, and under these circumstances, we may 



22 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

not forget our obligations also to the Rev. Dr. William 
Smith, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, the 
president of the House of Deputies, for so impressively 
reading the prayer before that body that all prejudice 
against it was disarmed ■} nor may we here, more than 
elsewhere, forget our obligations to Bishop White for his 
cheerful co-operation in this particular with Bishop Seabury 
in the episcopal house, and for the unfailing charity and 
good sense which could see no superstition in these ancient 
forms, and which, even if indisposed himself to accept 
them in their full sense, prevented him from hindering 
others from the benefit of them. 

If you can pardon, dear brethren, the dryness of some 
of the details which could not well be avoided in a task 
of this sort, I trust that you will be deeply impressed, as I 
mj'self am, with the consciousness of the profound grati- 
tude which we owe to our forefathers of the period to 
which I have referred, as the point at which the wise and 
holy influences which have emanated from Christ Church 
have touched the most vital and tender interests of the 
Church of Christ in our whole communion in this country. 

By others you will doubtless in the course of this com- 
memoration be reminded of many other particulars of 
your parish traditions. The present reference to them 
has seemed best suited to the effort which it has been 
devolved on me to make. There is nothing, I am per- 
suaded, more notable or more important in the contempla- 
tion of what God hath wrought for the Church in this 
country than the understanding of the complex character 
which has been impressed upon it by Him whose wisdom 
hath made all things double one against another. And 
while there are manj- great and honourable names connected 
with the epoch which we have considered, yet the names 



"Christ Church in the Revolution," sermon by Bishop Perrj,-. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 23 

of those two, to whom so frequent reference has been made, 
must ever stand as the chief exponents of that harmony 
or balance of correlative truth for which this Church is 
perhaps most eminently conspicuous in the Christian 
world. I thank God that the symbolism of this harmony 
is noted on this day by the ministrations in this place of 
a priestly descendant of each of these two brethren in the 
episcopate, and that, as the elder serving the younger, I 
may be permitted to receive the Bread of Ivife consecrated 
in the form associated with the name of Seabury, from the 
hands of a descendant of White. I pray God to bless his 
priesthood to his own eternal peace, and the comfort and 
salvation of many souls. 

May He, in whose wisdom all things are double one 
against another and who hath made nothing imperfect, 
sanctify with His continual grace, and protect with His 
perpetual providence the church which has thus far been 
by Him enabled so fully to reflect His own wisdom, and to 
constitute and perpetuate a system which hands down to 
succeeding ages the Catholic verities of a venerable and 
primitive tradition, and brings to bear upon the difiiculties 
of their application to modern times the wise discretion of 
a sanctified reason, which not only proves all things, but 
also holds fast that which is good. 

And may this holy place, in which so eminently one 
thing has been made to establish the good of another, be 
preserved in its good work of faith and love until the end 
of time shall come, and in the brightness of the beatific 
vision of God, they that have learned and loved the truth 
shall be forever filled with beholding His glory. 



24 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 
ADDRESS BY THE REV. DR. STEVENS. 



On the afternoon of Sunday, November lytli, a service 
was held for children of the parish. The Rector, the Rev. 
Dr. Stevens, delivered an extemporaneous address. He 
detailed scenes in the history of the church, beginning 
with a description of the primeval forest that originally 
occupied the site, and of the Indians who were accustomed 
to perform savage dances and other rites at a pond near by. 
He narrated the incorporation by King Charles II in the 
charter of Pennsylvania granted to William Penn of the 
clause providing for services of the Church of England, by 
right of which Christ Church had been founded. He 
recounted the history of the colonial period, referring to 
the use of the church as the official place of worship of 
the colonial governors, and eventually of the Penn family. 
The colonial wars were alluded to, and the fact that the 
parishioners had sent powder and bullets to fight the French 
and Indians in the Seven Years' War, and had delayed the 
building of the spire in order to do so. The grave of Gen. 
Forbes, who commanded the successful expedition that 
captured Fort Duquesne, was pointed out in the chancel. 
The erection of the spire by a committee, of which Frank- 
lin was an active member, was told. Then followed an 
account of the relation of Christ Church to the Revolu- 
tionary- War ; of the meeting in the church of the Conti- 
nental Congress, and of the ringing of the bells in welcome 
of the Declaration of Independence. The time of the 
making of the Constitution of the United States was also 
referred to, and the presence in the church at that period of 
many who were engaged in the great undertaking. 

The narrative of subsequent events began with a descrip- 
tion of the worshipping for six years in Christ Church of 



Bi-Centemiial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 25 

the first President of the United States, George Washing- 
ton, — regularly accompanied in the Washington Pew by- 
Martha Washington. The singular fact was noted that 
here also had worshipped Mrs. Ross, the maker of the first 
American flag ; and Joseph Hopkinson, author of the 
national hymn, "Hail Columbia." The presence in the 
church of notable men of our history, including the Mar- 
quis de Lafayette, was touched ; and the association of the 
church with great names of the War of 181 2 and of the 
Rebellion. Finally the relation of Christ Church to the 
Church in the United States was dwelt upon, — this being 
the spot where met the first House of Bishops and the first 
House of Deputies ; where the American Church was organ- 
ized, and its Constitution and Prayer Book adopted ; and 
where, in later years, the General Convention officially cele- 
brated the first centennial of our national communion. 



MONDAY, NOVEMBER i8th. 



On the morning of this day the Holy Eucharist was 
celebrated at an early hour. In the evening there was a 
festival for the Sunday-school in the Parish House. 



TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19th. 



The early celebration of the Blessed Sacrament was 
continued. In the evening a public function in connec- 
tion with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania was held 
in the church in the presence of a distinguished gathering. 
The President of the Society, Charles J. Stille, LL.D., 



26 Bi-Ceiiiennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

ex-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, was intro- 
duced by the Rev. Dr. Stevens, and delivered an address 
on "The Historical Relations of Christ Church with 
Pennsylvania." 



ADDRESS OF CHARLES J. STILLE, LL.D. 



The history of the indirect influence of Christ Church 
upon the lay element in Pennsylvania, in the provincial 
era, is not as interesting nor as attractive a topic as the 
ecclesiastical history proper of the church. The most 
conspicuous examples of such influence are to be found in 
the repeated but unsuccessful eSbrts made b}' members of 
this congregation to persuade the King to subvert the 
Proprietary government, the administration and policy of 
which they alleged tended to destroy the exercise of their 
rights and privileges, civil and religious, as free-bom 
Englishmen. On four different occasions at least in 
seventy years its members were the leaders of such a 
movement, and I propose, in treating of the topic which 
has been assigned to me, to explain why they adopted 
such revolutionary measures to destroy the government 
under which they lived. 

The lay element in Philadelphia society in provincial 
days belonging to the dominant religious sect, may be said 
to have been for many years unfriendly to the doctrine and 
discipline of the Church of England, and it watched the 
growth in strength and power of Christ Church with sus- 
picion and jealousy. From the beginning there were two 
parties here : the Church party and the Quaker party. 
The former contended that its opponent had usurped power 
not granted by the Charter of the Province, to the mani- 
fest injury of the civil and religious rights of other free- 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Clnirch^ Philadelphia. 27 

born Englishmen. Strange to saj^, Christ Church, — although 
flourishing for more than seventy years in a peaceful com- 
munity, with absolute freedom of worship, the right to 
which had never even been questioned by the Quaker 
rulers of the Province nor by anyone else, — was in a very 
important sense a Church Militant. Indeed, I do not think 
it is going too far to say that in no American colony were 
the Church and those who dissented from it during many 
years placed in more open and violent antagonism. The 
Quakers formed for a long time the dominant party in the 
Province, and Churchmen alleged that it exercised at times 
its power in such a way as to conflict with the traditional 
religious beliefs and practices of the members of the 
Established Church. The latter, feeble in number, con- 
stantly resorted to the Imperial power in England to main- 
tain what they claimed to be their civil and religious 
rights and privileges. They petitioned the King to force 
the Quaker magistrates to take such oaths of ofBce as were 
customary and obligatory in England, and to which alone 
they attributed any binding legal force here. They asked 
that the juries and witnesses in the courts should come 
under the same formal obligation, that the right of petition, 
which they alleged the Quakers had set at naught, should 
be maintained as sacred, and that they should be forced to 
place the Province in a state of defence against the pirates 
and Indians, by whose incursions they were threatened. 
Feeling that there was little prospect of compelling the 
Quakers to adopt any such measures of legislation in the 
Provincial Assembly' as the emergency required, they 
earnestly urged the King to dispossess the Proprietor, to 
dissolve the existing government, and to govern Pennsyl- 
vania henceforth as a Royal Province. 

There is a popular opinion that the Provincial Regime 
in Pennsylvania was marked not only by religious tolera- 



28 Bi-Cetitennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

tion, but by absolute religious freedom ; that there was, 
during this provincial era, a kind of idN'llic tranquility and 
harmony here, resulting from non-interference with the 
religious rights and opinions of those who did not agree 
with the ruling party. Those who hold such opinions for- 
get that although William Penn, our founder, was the most 
enlightened political philosopher of his time, and one of 
the earliest advocates, since the days of the Emperor Con- 
stantine, of absolute religious freedom, none of his succes- 
sors in office held the same opinions as he. There was not 
a Quaker among them. They and their Deputy Governors 
during the whole Provincial Regime were strong adherents 
of the English Church, as by law established, and in an 
important sense special patrons of Christ Church. Their 
notion of other people's religious rights did not extend 
beyond the protection vouchsafed to Dissenters by the 
English Toleration Act (so called) of 1689. They held 
that the Quakers had no special power in this Province to 
enlarge the indulgence granted by that Act. The history, 
therefore, of the comparatively small body of Episcopalians 
here, or of the members of Christ Church (for I use in this 
paper the terms as equivalent), is a histor\' of strife for 
objects which we may now think trivial, but which both 
parties, two hundred j-ears ago, looked upon as fundamental. 
It is, of course, not pleasant to recall the history- of more 
than seventy years of religious discords, but I trust that we 
are now far enough awa}- from the battle-field to describe 
its scenes with impartialitj' and truth. If I am forced to 
" rake iip the ashes of our fathers," I trust that it will not be 
necessary- to disturb them further than to throw light upon 
the scenes in which they were such conspicuous actors. 

By the "great law" adopted by the freemen at Upland 
in December, 1682, it was provided that " no person now 
or hereafter li\-ing in the Pro\"ince, who shall confess one 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 29 

Almighty God to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of 
the world, and professeth himself or herself obliged in con- 
science to live peaceably and justly under civil government, 
shall in any wise be molested or prejudiced for his or her 
conscientious persuasion and practices ; nor shall be obliged 
at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, 
place or ministry, contrary to his mind, but shall fully and 
freely enjoy his or her liberty in that respect without any 
interruption or molestation." This provision, it will be 
observed, establishes religious toleration, not liberty. 

Before the Charter was granted by the King, it was sub- 
mitted to the Bishop of London, and an amendment was 
made to it, at his instance, providing that that Bishop 
should have power to appoint a chaplain for the service of 
any congregation, consisting of not less than twenty persons, 
who might desire such a minister. Out of the different 
interpretation which was placed by the Quakers and by the 
Church people on this innocent looking provision, arose all 
the bitterness of the controversy which characterised the 
relations of these religious bodies during the Provincial 
era. There never was, it seems to me, a religious dispute 
in which each side was more sincere in maintaining oppo- 
site views. The Quakers insisted that the principal object 
which Penn had in view in founding the colony was to 
secure a place of refuge and safety for those of his followers 
who were exposed to persecution in England, and where 
they might with absolute freedom maintain their creed and 
practice their profession ; that all acts of the government 
should be subordinated to carrying out such a scheme, 
called by its leader " the Holy Experiment," and that any 
act of government, Imperial or Provincial, which inter- 
preted the Charter in any other way, was repugnant to its 
spirit, if not to its letter. 



30 Bi-Ce?itennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

The conditions imposed by law on the power of the 
Ivegislative Assembly, and to which they all heartily agreed, 
were that they should not deny liberty of worship to those 
who differed from them and should not deprive any one 
of his rights as an Englishman. The Quakers had, of 
course, the entire control of the legislative body, and they 
practically determined how far the privilege granted by the 
Charter extended. In their early legislation here they made, 
what turned out to be (as Penn had tried in vain to convince 
them), a serious mistake, and that was by sometimes acting 
as if this was a Quaker colony exclusively, possessed of 
certain privileges to which, as refugees and as Quakers, 
they considered themselves entitled, and to which all the 
inhabitants must conform ; and not, as it really .was, in law 
and in intention, a colony of free-born Englishmen, all of 
whom were entitled to the privileges granted by the Charter, 
as well as those common law rights of Englishmen which 
they had not forfeited by crossing the sea, whether they 
belonged to the Society of Friends or not. In those days 
a limited toleration, strictly laid down by a formal statute, 
was the only one which was recognized by English or 
Provincial law. The natural right to religious liberty, as 
it is now called, was not asserted, except by a stray philos- 
opher, until the period of our Revolution. Toleration in 
that era meant simply an exemption from the penalties 
which had been imposed upon Dissenters from the Estab- 
lished Church by various statutes which had been enacted 
since the Reformation. 

The utmost limit of that toleration was reached by a 
statute of the first year of William and Mary, 1689, com- 
monly called "the Toleration Act," which relieved certain 
Dissenters, including Quakers, who took the Test and made 
the Declaration against certain Roman Catholic dogmas, 
from penalties to which at the time they were amenable. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ CJnirch^ Philadelphia. 31 

The early legislation here of the Assembly, professed to 
give a wider or freer toleration than that granted in England 
by that Act. Hinc illae lacryniae. 

The English Churchman in this Province, and especially 
the English clergyman sent here by the Bishop of London, 
regarded all these pretensions of the Quakers as unfounded, 
illegal and extravagant. The clergyman when ordered 
here for duty by the Bishop of London might be a poor 
missionary, but he was a member of what he called the 
Established Church in America, and he brought with him, 
in his opinion, the whole power of that Church, with all 
the rights and immunities with which it was clothed in 
England. He had a lofty conception of the inherent dig- 
nity of his office. The Bishop of London was his lawful 
superior, he alone having jurisdiction over him, and in his 
Church courts alone could he be called upon to account for 
any offence in which the rights of conscience or his rights 
as a clergyman were involved. The tenure of his office 
was life-long ; his congregation and his vestry had no con- 
trol either in choosing or deposing him. With many of 
the clergy sent to this country, it was a favorite maxim 
that vestries were useless bodies, and they held to the old- 
world doctrine that the clergy should be supported by the 
State ; if not directly by tithes, then by setting apart large 
tracts of land, the income of which should be reserved for 
their support. In a word, for many years they held that 
any action of the Provincial government which interfered 
with their status and privileges here, as members of the 
Established Church of England, as settled by the statutes 
of the realm, should be disallowed by the Privy Council ; 
hence the frequent appeals on their part to the Imperial 
government, asking not merely that such action should be 
declared illegal and void, but that the Proprietary govern- 
ment should be abolished as incurably bent on setting 



32 Bi-Cente7t7tial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

aside their privileges, which they claimed as absolute in 
English law. 

With claims such as these, and with the feeling of supe- 
riority to their fellow-colonists begotten of those claims, it 
is not to be wondered at that any act of the Quaker majority 
of the Assembly, which seemed to dispute their validity, 
should be severely criticised and opposed by the Episcopal 
clergy. It is perhaps not too much to say that the Church- 
men from the beginning, under the lead of Colonel Quarry, 
the Judge of Admiralty, and the most conspicuous member 
of the vestry of Christ Church, were anxious to substitute 
a Royal for a Proprietary government, but they were 
ready, before the controversy was closed, to avow that it 
was their purpose to contend for it. In the meantime a 
most uncomfortable feeling existed between the parties, and 
any act of the majority which could be construed to con- 
strain the actions of Churchmen in anyway, seemed likely 
to kindle into a consuming flame the spirit of discord 
which grew apace with the growth of Christ Church. 

But the clergy were not the only complainants ; mur- 
murs of dissatisfaction were heard among those of the 
laity who were not Quakers, that the legislation of the 
Quaker Provincial Assembly was inconsistant with the 
Charter and the safety of the Province. No proper pre- 
paration, it was alleged, was made to protect the inhabitants 
against the pirates in Delaware Ba}', the French and 
Indians, the Test Oath was made more indulgent in its 
terms than had been prescribed by Parliament, and a general 
disposition, it was said, was shown to govern the Province 
on Quaker principles, not on those distinctl}' English. 

To those who have looked on William Penn as the 
apostle of toleration, it seems indeed strange that the very 
first complaint made by the vestry and congregation of 
Christ Church against the legislation of the Assembly and 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 33 

the action of the magistrates under it, was that it violated 
the civil and religious rights of these Englishmen, inhabi- 
tants of the Province, who were not Quakers. Yet such was 
the charge brought before the Privy Council. Within ten 
years after the settlement of the Province, George Keith, at 
one time a most zealous Quaker and a very learned man, 
but who afterwards became a very active Church missionary, 
denounced the leaders of his former friends in a manner, 
which, to put it mildly, constituted the serious ofifence (as 
the Quakers considered it and had so declared by a Provin- 
cial statue) of " speaking evil of dignities." For this 
ofifence Keith was brought before the magistrates (many 
of whom were members of the Ecclesiastical Meeting, a 
tribunal which had deposed him from his membership in 
the Society), and being somewhat bullied by them, he lost 
his temper and abused his judges in his turn. For this he 
was nominally condemned to pay a fine, but Churchmen 
chose to consider his sentence as really that of an apostate, 
and not merely the punishment meted out to an ofiFender 
against the statute which prohibited speaking disrespect- 
fully of the government or its officers. His friends, and 
especially Churchmen, took up his cause with zeal, and as 
they had no hope of relief from the Provincial govern- 
ment, they went to the root of the matter and sent a peti- 
tion to the Imperial government, begging it to depose that 
of the Proprietar>-. They insisted that Keith had been 
tried by a tribunal which had no legal authority whatever, 
the judges never having been qualified for their office by 
taking either the oath or affirmation then required of all 
officials by the Imperial government. They insisted, too, 
that Keith had really been condemned for an ecclesiastical, 
not for a civil offence, and that thus the rights of non- 
Quakers were placed in jeopardy. These charges, which 
accused the authorities of a flagrant usurpation of power, 



34 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

■were formally laid before the Privy Council in England. 
At the same time it was alleged that the Quakers, owing 
to their conscientious scruples about war, had taken no 
measures to protect the shores of Delaware Bay from the 
incursions of pirates. As William Penn was probably 
thought by the new sovereigns to be something of a 
Jacobite, owing to his favor with James II, he was suspended 
from his government, which was handed over temporarily 
to Governor Fletcher, of New York. Thus it would appear 
that the lay element of the Church here, even before the 
formal organization of Christ Church, was strong enough 
to induce the English government to revolutionize the 
administration, mainly on the ground that the rights of non- 
Quakers were not adequately protected by the action of the 
Provincial Assembly which the Quaker majority controlled. 
It is difficult, I confess, to understand with our present 
notions of religious liberty, how Churchmen, possessing, 
as they did, freedom of worship and the absolute control of 
the property belonging to their Church, could have made 
any complaint on that score of a violation of the religious 
rights of those who were non-Quakers. However this may 
be, it was evident that the Provincial Assembly did not 
learn wisdom from experience. In 1698, after the Proprie- 
tary government had been restored, the magistrates con- 
tinued their prosecutions against those who attacked the 
Provincial government, and their opponents asked that the 
King should take them under his special care. A petition 
to the Crown requesting that such a change should be m.ade 
was denounced by the Provincial magistrates as seditious, 
and its supposed author was arrested and condemned for 
violating the statue making it a penal offence to speak 
disrespectfully of the government and its officers. To 
this was added by the non-Quakers a protest against a 
statute passed in 1700, substituting a new form of test in 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 35 

the room of that which had heretofore been in force by 
virtue of the Toleration Act, by which the Quakers here 
were granted a toleration which did not exist in England. 
All these measures were protested against by the vestr}' of 
Christ Church as an invasion of what they called their 
religious rights as members of the Church of England. 
They sent a second time a petition to the Privy Council by 
Colonel Quarry, asking that some remedy for their griev- 
ances should be found. So great was the influence of this 
then feeble church with the Imperial authorities, that they 
were again led to interpose, and orders were sent out here in 
1702 requiring that hereafter all persons who wished to 
celebrate their worship publicly or to hold any office under 
the Provincial government without exposing themselves to 
the law against non-conformity, should be obliged to make 
a declaration of fidelity and allegiance to the sovereign and 
to take the Test ; that is, make a declaration of their dis- 
belief in certain Roman Catholic Dogmas in the exact 
form provided by the English Toleration Act. There was 
at first considerable hesitation here in taking this Test, not 
that there was any objection to the doctrines it avowed, but 
the objections were as to the form of the affirmation required. 
The Assembly was induced in 1705, by what influence 
I have never been able clearly to understand, to embody 
in a statute provisions requiring all persons in the Province 
to qualify themselves for taking any office by taking and 
subscribing the Test and affirming their belief in the Decla- 
ration as an indispensable qualification before assuming its 
duties. This Act, which is simph^ a copy of that portion 
of the English Toleration Act, which granted exemption 
from any penalty upon certain classes of Dissenters from 
the Established Church, remained in force up to the time 
of the Revolution, and it seems to have settled the vexed 
question how far any one could go astray from the orthodoxy 



36 Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

required by the Imperial government and yet hold office, 
by pleading that another standard had been set up b}' the 
Assembly of the Province. The policy which provided 
that these Tests should prevail in Pennsylvania was in 
strict imitation of the widest form of toleration then 
known in England. If we wish to trace the influence of 
Christ Church on the lay element during the Provincial 
era, not only here but in England, we cannot do better 
than consider carefully the part that she took in this other- 
wise profitless controversy, and for that reason I have 
called attention to these long-forgotten quarrels. I have 
alluded to them here only because they jeopardized the 
existence of the Proprietary government. 

At this time (1704) the congregation consisted of about 
five hundred members, and the number of persons in the 
Province who were Episcopalians was constantly increasing. 
Mission churches were established at Chester, Oxford, 
Radnor, New Castle and Dover, which were served by 
clergymen sent out by the Venerable Societ}^ And as they 
secured a firmer footing in the Province, the fear which 
had oppressed the earliest members of the Church that 
they would perish from their own weakness, gave way to a 
more hopeful spirit. Still, as late as 17 18, the friends of 
the Church, both here and in England, endeavored to per- 
suade Sir William Keith, the most popular of the Proprie- 
tary Governors, and the one least inclined to stretch his 
prerogative, to make an effort to secure permanent legal 
support for the Church. His answer tells the whole story 
in a single sentence. " I agree with you," he saj's, " that 
the Church should be endowed by the Province, but what 
can I do for such an object with an Assembly composed 
of twenty-five Quakers and three Churchmen." 

As time passed on the controversial spirit became less 
bitter, and indeed differences of opinion grew less marked 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 2>7 

as people knew each other better. Churchmen became 
less exclusive and welcomed here in this church the 
ministrations of the Swedish clergymen who then had 
charge of the Swedish mission here. For many years 
the services of the Church were in charge at different 
times of Rudman, Sandel, Lidman, Hesselius and Lin- 
denius, who were recognized as in full communion with 
the Church of England, although they had been ordained 
by the Archbishop of Upsal and not by the English 
Bishops. As one remarkable result of this fraternal spirit, 
and as illustrating how the influence of this church 
extended bej-ond its borders, I may remind you that four 
churches originally Swedish in this State, one in Delaware 
and one in New Jersey, became, at different times, by the 
almost unanimous vote of their congregations, constituent 
members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
United States. 

In speaking of the influence of the members of this 
congregation on public affairs during the Provincial era, I 
must not forget to claim for some of them the great honor 
of having been the founders and the early guardians of the 
College and Academy of Philadelphia. Dr. Franklin, who 
first conceived the plan of this establishment, and sought 
with characteristic vigor to organize it by securing money 
for its endowment and selecting its professors, was a pew- 
holder in this church, although he disclaimed any inten- 
tion of making the College a Church institution. He 
preferred that in a Province such as this it should rest 
upon what was called in those days the "broad bottom," 
that is, that it should be independent of the control of any 
church or denomination. But when he looked around for 
those who would appreciate and support his project, he was 
obliged to take from this congregation mainly the men of 
education and of means who would aid him. His first 



38 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

choice for rector or head master of the Academy was the 
Rev. Richard Peters, one of the most scholarly men in the 
Province, who had long held the important place of Secre- 
tary of the Land Office and afterwards for nearly ten years 
was the Rector of Christ Church. Finding it impossible 
to induce Mr. Peters to accept the place, he made the final 
choice of Rev. William Smith, a man of indomitable 
energy, of very considerable learning and of great organ- 
izing power. Mr. Smith was an Episcopal clergyman of 
high reputation, and, as far as a man in his position could 
be, he was a member of this congregation. He gave life 
and vigor to the skeleton plan which Dr. Franklin had 
sketched out. His experience as a teacher and his various 
learning led him afterwards into paths where Dr. Franklin 
could not follow him, yet his scheme of college education, 
in accordance with the universal judgment of scholars for 
more than a hundred years, formed the true model for the 
liberal training of young men in this country. He induced 
the trustees of the Academy, shortly after his induction, 
to solicit from the Proprietaries a charter for a college, 
and, this obtained, he established as a means of instruction 
in this institution a curriculum of studies which formed 
the basis of the system afterwards adopted by every college 
in this country professing to give a liberal training to 
young men. The result of the life and vigor which he 
had infused into the college which he had created, was, in 
the opinion of the late Dr. George Wood, such, that in a 
short time this college, founded by two of your members, 
" was perhaps unrivalled and certainly not surpassed by 
any seminary at that time existing in the Provinces." 
And, I may add, that had it escaped from the mischievous 
designs of unscrupulous politicians during the Revolution, 
and had its afiairs since that era always been managed 
with the same self-sacrificing devotion and fidelity to its 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 39 

interests exhibited by its trustees before that change, it 
would doubtless to-day occupy the same proud pre-emi- 
nence. Of the trustees previous to the Revolution nearly 
four-fifths were members of this congregation ; and this 
was the period when its work was most active and the 
demands on their enlightened care incessant. Mr. Peters,, 
the rector of the church, was for many years the president 
of the board, and the trustees, agreeing with Dr. Smith 
as to the plan of education which had been adopted, and 
disagreeing wholly, much to his chagrin, with that urged 
by Dr. Franklin, supported fully their Provost, not only in 
all his efforts for the promotion of higher education here, 
but in all the various trials and difficulties into which his 
eager and impetuous temper led him. Dr. Smith was a 
strict Churchman for those days, as were doubtless the 
majority of the trustees of the college, but they ever 
maintained its original design by selecting as its professors 
men who represented the various denominations in the 
city. One of the more immediate good results of the 
establishment of this college was the training of men who 
occupied a prominent position as ministers of Christ 
Church at the outbreak of the Revolution. William 
White, Jacob Duche and Thomas Coombe were all gradu- 
ates of the College of Philadelphia and received their 
training from Dr. Smith. 

Between the years 1740 and 1756 there was perpetual 
fear of war and an invasion of this Province by the Indians 
and French, who had formed what was intended to be a 
permanent alliance, and had established themselves on the 
line between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. The object of the 
invasion on the part of the French was supposed by many, 
who thought themselves wise, to be part of a systematic 
scheme to subjugate the English colonists on the borders 
of the Atlantic in this and other provinces ; to make them 



40 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

dependencies of France, and, worse than all, to force, by 
persecution, the inhabitants to become Roman Catholics. 
However chimerical all these fears may appear to us now, 
there is no doubt of the reality of the anxiety and appre- 
hension which they excited at the time. To the intensity 
of the desire to make some adequate military preparation 
to defend themselves, was added the natural dread of con- 
tending with such a nation as France, when no means of 
defence had been made ready, as well as a special horror of 
the practices of the savage and inhuman warfare of the 
Indians. Those who had now combined against us were 
the descendants of those whom William Penn on his 
arrival had found so friendly — the Delawares and the 
Shawnees — who had been made desperate by the cruel and 
fraudulent appropriation of their lands by his successors. 
Gentle as lambs when the white man first came among 
them, they had become fiends now, as all the accounts of 
their cruel massacres of the inhabitants clearly showed. 
The settlers in the territory exposed to these ravages called 
loudly upon the government for protection and succor. 
Although the deepest sympathy was expressed on all 
hands for their unfortunate condition, no troops were sent 
to defend them, owing to the quarrel between the Governor 
and the Assembly as to the best mode by which the soldiers 
and the money for their support should be raised. The 
Governor, to state the nature of the controversy in a 
single sentence, urged that a Militia Bill, which should 
enroll as many of the able-bodied men of the Province as 
might be needed, should be passed, and that a tax should 
be levied for their pay and equipment, from which the 
immense private estates of the Proprietaries should be 
exempted ; while the Assembly contended that the neces- 
sary force should be raised by a voluntary enlistment, and 
that loans should be issued to raise money, to be reim- 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 41 

bursed by general taxation, for the maintenance of the 
troops. For many years this wearisome and profitless 
struggle continued and nothing was done in the way of 
defence of the frontier or to avert the threatened danger of 
invasion. The Governor and the Proprietary party insisted 
that the refusal to adopt his suggestions was owing to con- 
scientious scruples on the part of the Quakers about 
making war, but so untrue was this charge that the 
Assembly, goaded into action by Braddock's defeat in July, 
1755, consented at last to exempt the estates of the Pro- 
prietaries from taxation, in consideration of a gift by them 
to the Province of five thousand pounds, and established a 
chain of forts from the Delaware to the Maryland frontier 
along the Alleghany Mountains, garrisoned by a body of 
volunteers. Provincial troops, who for a long time effectu- 
ally guarded the threatened districts. In this controversy 
the larger number of the members of this congregation 
sided with the Proprietary party, having convinced them- 
selves that no Assembly in which the Quakers had a 
majority of the votes would, under any circumstances, 
adopt warlike measures. They went so far on this account 
as to join with the Presbyterians, who had suffered most 
severely from the Indian raids after Braddock's defeat, in a 
petition to the Crown, being the third time in which they 
had made the same application, asking that Quakers 
should not be permitted hereafter to sit as members of the 
Assembly. Their action must be attributed to a deep- 
rooted delusion on the subject, which then prevailed here, 
and which perhaps the professed principles of the Quakers 
had done much to foster, and to the natural anxiety which 
they felt to prevent the possibility of the recurrence of 
a neglect of the safety of the Province. 

But during the years of danger which threatened their 
safety, when the accounts from the West told of little but 



43 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

of Indian outrages and French victories and marches east- 
ward, the conduct of this congregation was marked by a 
manliness and courage and readiness to make sacrifices for 
the safety of the Province, worthy of all praise as an 
example, and to which those who succeed them here may 
point with becoming pride. They were taught from this 
pulpit the Christian duty of warfare in defending them- 
selves. Dr. Smith tells us that in this crisis he preached 
here no less than eight " militar}' sermons," as he calls them; 
and we may be quiet sure that in them the duty of defend- 
ing their lives and their homes from a French and Indian 
invasion was duly inculcated. We may be also certain, 
from what we know of the membership of Christ Church 
at that time, that the men on whom the Governor most 
fully depended at that critical time for the safety of the 
Province were to be found among those who gathered 
here to worship God. The military spirit which prevailed 
in the congregation was so marked that, in 1758, at the 
opening of the campaign of that year General Forbes, 
commander of the army in this Province, could find no 
better means of rousing the military ardor of the inhabi- 
tants than by asking Dr. Smith to denounce here once 
more the horrible cruelties which his army was sent to 
avenge. 

During the eventful years (1740-1756) in which the 
Province was forced to defend itself from the incursions of 
the Indians to the westward, none of the inhabitants who 
formed social organizations were more zealous and steady 
in upholding the hands of those to whom were committed 
Ihe safety, honor and welfare of the people of this Prov- 
ince, than the members of this congregation. Opinions 
might differ, and doubtless often did, among them in regard 
to the righteousness of the conduct of the agents of the 
government in their treatment of the Indians, but when 



Bi-Cente7inial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 43 

these savages determined to wreak their vengeance by an 
indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, the law which 
Churchmen invoked was that of self-defence. At that 
time the members of Christ Church succored the distressed 
inhabitants west of the Susquehanna by timely gifts, and 
they urged the immediate necessity of raising money and 
men to protect them, profiting by the lessons which they 
had learned, as I have stated, from this pulpit as to the 
clear duty of the citizens and the Christian. At that time 
the special interest which the members of this church 
could feel as Episcopalians in the sufferings of those 
exposed to Indian assaults was centered in a feeble mission 
of the Venerable Society, of which the headquarters were 
at Carlisle. But the sympathy exhibited by them in this 
city for the victims of savage cruelty was not bounded by 
any such narrow frontier. Judging from the names 
attached to a petition to the Crown in 1756, praying that 
hereafter no non-resistant Quaker should be permitted to 
hold a seat in the Assembly, the members of this congre- 
gation were the most determined of those who were willing 
to undergo any revolutionary change in government which 
would guarantee that the white population of the Province 
should be duly protected. 

There were many officers, members and pew-holders in 
Christ Church in the regiments raised by the government 
of the Province for service during the French and Indian 
wars. General James Irvine, who was a prominent mem- 
ber of this congregation, and is traditionally remembered 
from his always appearing clad in mourning on Good 
Friday, began his military career as an officer in Bouquet's 
expedition for the recapture of Fort Duquesne, and was 
during the Revolution an officer of high rank in the 
Pennsylvania line. Among others, we find the well- 
known names of Colonels Thomas Lawrence, Edward 



44 Bi-Cente7i7iial of Christ UiJirch^ Philadelphia. 

Jones and Turbutt Francis ; of Lieut.-Colonels Thomas 
Yorke and James Coultas ; of Major Samuel McCall ; of 
Captain Thomas Bond ; of Lieutenants Lynford Lardner, 
William Bingham, Atwood Shute, James Claypoole and 
Plimket Fleeson. 

It is not to be forgotten that the social position of many 
of the members of this Parish (the united churches of 
Christ and St. Peter's) gave them an influence out of all 
proportion with their numbers. It is true, of course, that 
in the Provincial era the laymen of this church were, 
generally speaking, of the Proprietary^ party, and had sup- 
ported the war measures of that party ; but when they 
found that the government of the Province had become 
that of a deputy, without whose consent no legislation 
could be enacted, and who was bound in his acts to obey 
the instructions of the Proprietaries in England, and who 
was in no way responsible to the people of the Province 
for them, they joined with other parties in the Assembly 
in unanimously declaring, in 1763, that pretensions such 
as these were as dangerous to the prerogative of the Crown 
as they were to the liberties of the people. Proprietary 
men as they were supposed to be, they had no hesitation 
in praying the King, for the fourth time, with Dr. Frank- 
lin, in 1764, that he would resume the government of 
the Province and that the Proprietary system should be 
abolished. 

The signs of the times became more portentous after the 
enactment of the Stamp Act of 1765, and it soon became 
apparent that there would be as much opposition here on 
the part of Churchmen to Imperial misgovernment, as there 
had been to the arbitrary pretensions of the Governors. 
Indeed, it is hardly worth proving that during these 
perilous times all classes of people in Pennsylvania, resist- 
ants and non-resistants alike, protested against the Minis- 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 45 

terial measures. The members of this congregation, in 
common with their fellow-citizens of other beliefs, remon- 
strated against the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, as well as 
against the Boston Port Bill and other measures intended 
to punish the town of Boston ; they all signed the Non- 
importation and the Non-exportation Agreements ; they all 
petitioned the Crown to guarantee the right of self-govern- 
ment ; they determined to maintain the fundamental rights 
of the colonies ; they warned the Ministry that armed 
resistance would be made to further encroachments, and 
they did not hesitate to vote for raising men and money for 
the defence of the Province after the battle of Lexington. 
Yet, with all this, they never ceased to hope that some 
peaceful settlement of the dispute might be made, and that 
no violent separation from the Mother Country would take 
place. As the crisis of the Revolution approached, the 
opinions held by the congregation as to the course they 
would take, are best expressed in the letter of their clergy 
to the Bishop of London. In this letter, dated June 30, 
1775, the clergy of this parish, Messrs. Richard Peters, 
Jacob Duche, Thomas Coombe, William Stringer and 
William White, join with Dr. Smith, the Provost of the 
College, in saying to the Bishop of London, " All that we 
can do is to pray for such a settlement and to pursue those 
principles of moderation and reason which your Lordship 
has always recommended to us. We have neither interest 
nor consequence sufficient to take any great lead in the 
affairs of this great country. The people will feel and 
judge for themselves in matters affecting their own civil 
happiness ; and were we capable of any attempt which 
might have the appearance of drawing them to what they 
think would be a slavish resignation of their rights, it 
would be destructive to ourselves as well as to the Church 
of which we are ministers. But it is but justice to our 



46 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

superiors, and to your Lordship in particular, to declare 
that such conduct has never been required of us. Indeed, 
could it possibly be required, we are not backward to say 
that our consciences would not permit us to injure the 
rights of the country. We are to leave our families in it, 
and cannot but consider its inhabitants entitled, as well as 
their brethren in England, to the right of granting their 
own money ; and that every attempt to deprive them of 
this right will either be found abortive in the end or 
attended with evils which would infinitely outweigh all 
the benefits to be obtained by it. Such being our persua- 
sion, we must again declare it to be our constant prayer, in 
which we are sure that your Lordship joins, that the hearts 
of good and benevolent men in both countries may be 
directed towards a plan of reconciliation worthy of being 
ofiered by a great nation that have long been the patrons 
of freedom throughout the world, and not unworthy of 
being accepted by a people sprung from them and by birth 
claiming a participation in their rights." 

The sentiments frankly expressed in this letter were not 
merely those of the clergy of Christ Church, but voiced 
doubtless the opinion of its lay members, as well as that of 
a large circle of friends not of their religious faith, but 
within the sphere of their influence. In a community 
such as Philadelphia then was, it is not easy to over- 
estimate the power derived from the common opinion on a 
momentous question of its foremost citizens. Men like 
William Bingham, Richard Bache, Benjamin Chew, John 
Cadwalader, Gerardus Clarkson, Redmond Conyngham, 
Manuel Eyre, Michael Hillegas, Archibald McCall, Charles 
Meredith, Edmund Physick, William Plumstead, Samuel 
Powel, Edward Shippen, Richard and Thomas Willing, 
never speak in vain. These are names as familiar to those 
who have passed a long life in Philadelphia as household 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 47 

words, and those who bore them were all members of the 
congregation of Christ Church. This letter to the Bishop 
of London doubtless reveals that feeling of mingled defi- 
ance and dread with which they viewed the approach of 
the Revolution. 

Of these clergymen of the Church here, it may be said 
that Messrs. White and Duche became afterwards chaplains 
of the Continental Congress, and that Dr. Smith urged, in 
a powerful sermon delivered before Colonel Cadwalader's 
regiment of Volunteer Associators in this church, the 
right and duty of armed resistance if the grievances com- 
plained of were not redressed. At that time (the early 
period of the Revohition) it is hardly necessary to say that 
there was no question of independence, for no public man 
in Pennsylvania, within or without Christ Church, had 
advocated such a measure. When the time arrived when 
it was thought necessary by Congress to proclaim our inde- 
pendence, no less than three of the signers of that immortal 
instrument, Franklin, Robert Morris and Hopkinson, were 
found to be pew-holders in this church. And on the very 
day on which that great charter of a new nation was 
signed, it was agreed by the vestry and clergy of this 
church that the long-familiar prayer for the King and the 
Royal Family should thenceforth be omitted from the 
service. In short, in no quarter was the action of the 
Assembly of the State and of Congress dissolving our 
allegiance to Great Britain more loyally obeyed than in 
this church, to which kings and queens in happier days 
had been loving nursing fathers and nursine mothers. 

With the close of the Revolution that direct and peculiar 
influence of Christ Church upon the lay element in Phila- 
delphia, which, during the provincial era, had been so 
characteristic a feature of its corporate life, in a great 
measure ceased. Whether this was due to changes which 



48 Bi-Ce7ite)inial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

then brought into power men of a very different social 
position and very different political ideas from those who 
had governed this community in former days, I will not 
stop to inquire. Whatever may have been the cause, there 
can be no doubt in the mind of any student of our history 
that Quakers and Episcopalians, the foremost citizens of 
the Province, however faithful they may have been to the 
changes produced by the Revolution, lost their prestige 
and political leadership in the Commonwealth created by it. 

Thenceforth Christ Church entered upon a new era, and 
devoted herself to the propagation exclusively of that 
special form of Christianity of which she had been the 
recognized representative here. Under the guidance of 
that wise, discreet, revered and saintly man who was then 
her Rector and was soon afterwards to become the chief 
pastor of this diocese, she became in a very important 
sense omnium ecclesiartim mater et caput. 

Bishop White, I need not say, was not only a great 
Churchman, but he was a great citizen also. From the 
stormy days of the Revolution, when he taught Congress 
that resistance to oppression is a religious duty ; from the 
day in which in his study in St. Peter's house in this city 
he outlined a plan for the federal union of the Church, 
down to the day when he was laid at rest under the chan- 
cel of this church, the great work of his life was, so to 
speak, the naturalization of the order and discipline of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church under its new conditions in 
this countr}^ What measure of success attended his efforts 
it is not my province to speak of, but I may venture to 
affirm that the Church in this country can never be too 
grateful for what she owes to his wisdom and sagacity. 
He is the great link which binds the past to the present. 
He was the champion of all that is true and noble and 
inspiring in the history of that form of Christianity of 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 49 

which he was here the chief minister ; and to no wiser 
hands could the great task of adapting that historical and 
venerable form of ecclesiastical polity to our present need 
have been confided than to his. 

I count it as one of the happiest recollections of my 
youth that I should have been permitted to see Bishop 
White in the last year of his life, not robed in his canon- 
ical vestments nor surrounded by those things calculated 
to impress a boyish imagination with the dignity of his 
position, but walking these streets in the ordinary dress of 
a clergyman of that day. His tall, spare figure, his cos- 
tume, that of a gentleman of the old school, the broad- 
brimmed hat which half concealed his flowing white locks, 
his ample coat, his short clothes, his long stockings and 
buckled shoes, and his stout walking stafi" — all these 
things made him truly venerable in my eyes and produced 
an impression which the lapse of sixty years has not 
removed. As he passed along, supported on the arm of his 
grandson, I remember that I looked upon him, as I had 
ever been taught to regard him, as the last of the Revolu- 
tionary patriots. To those who met him and knew any- 
thing of his history and character, he was the type and 
exemplar of that pure and lofty doctrine which he had 
preached all his life. His perfect sincerity, his genuine 
simplicity, his boundless charity of act and opinion 
towards those who differed from him, caused him to be 
recognized, as was well said by a distinguished divine of 
another communion than his, as " truly the Bishop of us 
all." 

With such a history and with such personages serving 
as illustrations of it, Christ Church is not merely a temple 
where men have-met during the last two hundred years to 
worship God after the manner of their fathers, but it is 
also one of the brightest jewels in the mural crown of this 



50 Bv-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

goodly city. Here men have been taught during all that 
long period, not merely their duty to God, but also to con- 
secrate the service of their lives to the welfare of their 
fellow-men, and especially to that of our own community 
and Commonwealth. As we recall the names of its mem- 
bers who, in times past, amidst trials and obstacles of all 
sorts, have done their duty, while doing the State some 
service, may we emulate their example, never failing to 
heed the voice of God and our country' when it calls upon 
us for work and self-sacrifice. 



WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20th. 



The Rector celebrated the Holy Eucharist at 11 a.m. In 
the evening a festival Te Deum was sung, and a musical ser- 
vice rendered by the vested choir of Christ Church Chapel, 
under the direction of the choir-master of the chapel, Mr. 
J. Spencer Brock. An address was delivered by the Rt. 
Rev. Eeighton Coleman, D.D., LL-D., Bishop of Delaware. 



ADDRESS BY RT. REV. BISHOP COLEMAN. 



Hardly any saying is more generally accepted than this 
one: "Truth is stranger than fiction." There is no 
romance that can, for a moment, be compared as to real 
interest with simple history. Actual life has a sufficiency 
of the most startling events to satisfy any craving that is 
not totally awry. 

To some of us there is no branch of history which has 
about it the same attractive features that belong to what is 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 51 

known as Church history. Of necessity, it contains those 
elements which most appeal to our highest tastes and 
purest passions. Its study is also replete with lessons of 
the greatest profit. Covering now a period of nineteen 
centuries, and extending to so many parts of the world, its 
characters and events have relations to almost every interest 
that is universal and permanent. 

This is eminently true of that portion of ecclesiastical 
history which is connected with our own country. One 
may safely say, speaking generally, that America was 
originally colonized by the Church. I do not mean that 
the Church as such undertook or supervised this work. 
But it was largely done under her auspices. 

The charters, by right of which the chiefest settlements 
were made, bear evidence uniformly of the religious objects 
which they had in view, and the religion therein professed 
was that of the English Church. Thus the early history 
of what we now call the United States is contemporaneous 
with our own Church history. 

In the charter granted in 1681 by Charles II, provision 
was made for the introduction of the Church's ministrations 
into William Penn's colony. It is said that this provision 
was inserted at the instance of Bishop Compton, of London, 
who obtained for it the ready acquiescence of one whose 
family largely belonged to the Church. Chalmers asserts 
that the peaceful policy which Penn pursued toward the 
Indians was not a little due to the advice given him by this 
same prelate. 

His own kindly feelings toward the Church were not 
shared by many of those belonging to the Society of Friends. 
On the contrary these were very malignant, and persisted 
in their persecutions, summoning before the civil courts 
such Churchmen as dared to petition the authorities at 
home for clerg>-men. 



52 Bi- Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

This bitter opposition somewhat delayed the accomplish- 
ment of plans already formed, and it was not until nearly 
the close of the seventeenth century that we have any 
records of the establishment of regular Church services in 
the city of Philadelphia. 

And these records have to do with this venerable parish 
which is now celebrating its bi-centennial. For it was in 
the year 1695 that the first Christ Church was erected. 
The Rev. Dr. Dorr, in his valuable history of the parish, 
describes it as a goodly structure "for those days." He 
furthermore describes it as of brick, with galleries, and 
having accommodations for more than 500 persons.' Its 
cost was about ^600. 

It is difficult to do what seems imperative upon me at 
a time like this — namely, to pursue the history of this 
parish — without repeating what has already been told here 
upon many an interesting occasion. It is, unquestionably, 
a tempting theme ; for, as Dr. Dorr observes in the very 
outset of his introduction : " there is no building in our 
city, and it may be doubted whether there is any in our 
country, around which so many hallowed associations 
cluster, and which calls up so many time-honored and holy 
reminiscences" as this very structure. In a certain way it 
is, indeed, the Mother Church of the whole American 
Church.^ 

It stands a most impressive witness to the eventful his- 
tory of this branch of the Catholic Church — a history not 
without its periods of depression, but, so soon as the Church 
was fully organized, showing everywhere signs of whole- 
some progress and growth. When this building was first 



' See p. 25. By reference to p. 14, it may be inferred that the building 
was by no means so spacious as it is here represented to be ; there being 
only forty-two pews when enlarged in 171 1. 

^ See Bishop Stevens' Discourse of July 4, 1S76, p. 4. 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 53 

erected, Philadelphia had scarcely more than five thousand 
inhabitants. There was but one minister of the Church 
in the city. A great many of the younger people who 
were afraid of displeasing their parents or employers by 
attending the services in the daytime were obliged to listen 
to them while standing under the windows at night. 

In a letter addressed, under date of January 18, 1696-97, 
to Gov. Nicholson by Col. Quarry and others, it is declared 
that a great number of people conformed to Quakerism 
only for want of other religious services ; and, further, that 
" the late great distractions and divisions amongst the 
Quakers, and the many notorious, wicked and damnable 
principles and doctrines discovered to be amongst the 
greatest part of them, this makes the rest very uneasy and 
inquisitive after truth and the sound doctrine of the Church 
of England, which makes us positively {sic) assert that a 
pious, good and orthodox ministry would bring most of 
them over to the Church." 

There seems to be but little reason to doubt that in gen- 
eral the ministry provided in those days answered well to 
the description of the petitioners. And that their enthu- 
siastic prophecy was none too sanguine may be inferred 
from the fact that the Rev. George Keith, himself a dis- 
tinguished convert from the Friends, baptized not less than 
seven hundred members of that society in a comparatively 
short period of time. 

It is difficult for any one to imagine what might have 
been the total result if there had been more clergymen in 
the field, or the Church had been equipped with the means 
(especially bishops) whereby this lack could have been 
supplied. Even as late as the period of Bishop White's 
incumbency here as Rector, in the latter half of the century 
following that of which we are now more particularly treat- 
ing, he was the only clergyman in the whole Common- 



54 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

wealth of Pennsylvania ; and when he was chosen, in 1786, 
bishop of the diocese, there were but three clergymen 
present and voting. 

It can easily be seen how, amidst such general insuffici- 
ency, Christ Church filled a very important place in this 
city and diocese. The clergy and the vestr>' appear to 
have been equally in earnest in their endeavors to discharge 
the responsibilities thus resting upon them. In doing so, 
they pursued no narrow policy. When it became evident 
that a new church was needed in what was then called the 
southern part of the city, they set about the erection of St. 
Peter's Church. And later, when a similar want for the 
western part of the city was seriously felt, they undertook 
the building of what was named St. James' Church, in 
Seventh Street above Market. 

The duties of the sextons of these churches do not seem 
to have been any more onerous than were their stipends 
enriching. In 1761 the sexton of Christ Church applied 
for an increase of salary. The vestry agreed to give him 
£20 per year, on condition that he wash the church twice 
a year, and sand it at Easter and September, and also sweep 
the church every two weeks, and ring the bell. 

There was the same trouble in raising by ordinary means 
the necessary funds for Church purposes that parishes in 
more modern days have encountered. Twice resort was 
had (under, it would seem, the guidance chiefly of Benjamin 
Franklin) to lotteries for the money required to erect the 
graceful spire which has always been one of Philadelphia's 
most noted landmarks. The true appreciation of what is 
involved in systematic offerings was wanting then, as alas ! 
it is still with many who might naturally enough be ex- 
pected to have it. We read, under the date of 1763, of 
a certain lady, who not being willing to be called upon in 
the box collections — made in the church on Sundays — 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 55 

chose rather to pay yearly the sum of $3 for the purposes 
of such collections. 

On special occasions the congregation was not wanting 
in generosity. When in this same year of 1763 the frontier 
or back inhabitants, as they were styled, were suffering 
great distress and necessity by reason of an invasion by the 
Indians, the members of the united parishes of Christ 
Church and St. Peter's contributed to their relief over 
^660, besides a liberal supply of provisions. 

The matter of Church music has always received much 
attention at the hands of the parochial authorities. In the 
early part of 1763, provision was made for the erection of 
an organ in St. Peter's Church, and in the latter part of 
the same year steps were taken to procure one for Christ 
Church. The children of the united congregations had 
for some time been, as the records express it, " improved 
in the art of psalmody." Mr. William Young and Mr. 
Francis Hopkinson are mentioned as having taken great 
and constant pains in instructing them, and are especially 
thanked by the vestry, who encouraged those engaged in 
the work by frequently attending the rehearsals. The Mr. 
Hopkinson here named was one of the signers of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, and was also a distinguished jurist 
and poet. For a while, during the absence of the regular 
organist, he served in that capacity. 

In this same connection, it may not be amiss to say some- 
thing in regard to the introduction of surpliced choirs into 
America. The first mention of them of which I have any 
knowledge is found in the records of St. Michael's Church, 
Charleston, S. C. In 1798 a bill was passed by the vestry 
for washing the surplices " of clergy and children." In 
1816 a parishioner of Christ Church, Philadelphia, left by 
will a share in the Bank of Pennsylvania of the value of 
$400, in trust, as the nucleus of a fund "for teaching six 



56 Bi-Cetziennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

boys as a choir to sing in the orchestra," as it is expressed. 
Whether or not these boys were surpliced I have no means 
at the time of my present writing of learning. 

The authorities of the parish were early mindful of the 
advantages of what is known as " congregational singing; " 
for we find that in 1785 the following resolution was passed 
at a vestry meeting, viz. : 

" Resolved, That the clerks be desired to sing such tunes 
only as are plain and familiar to the congregations ; the 
singing of other tunes, and frequent changing of tunes 
being, to the certain knowledge of this vestrj', generally 
disagreeable and inconvenient." 

Dr. Dorr well calls it " a wholesome resolution." 

It might well have been recommended to other parishes. 
Having been privileged to serve as the leader of the choir 
in one of Philadelphia's churches, I can testify to the great 
variety in tunes and chants that prevailed say thirty or 
forty years ago, when it seemed to be the chief desire on 
the part of most musicians to have as many changes as 
possible. If the Gloria Patri were repeated between the 
Psalms, it was never chanted twice to the same music. 
What with the Cantus EcclesicB, the Carmina Sacra, The 
Shawm, The Church Choir, et id omne genus, it required 
the amplest sort of closets to contain, and the greater 
time of one during the service to find the places in, such a 
vast library of separate volumes. 

What a change for the better has been wrought in these 
latter days, and what an amount of prejudice and trepida- 
tion has been allayed ! When it was first proposed to 
chant the Venite, the proposition was resisted in some of 
our larger parishes as something bordering on the Church 
of Rome. The same dread was exhibited when it was 
suggested that the Te Deum should be rendered musically 
every Sunday : that hymn being always read, except on- 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 57 

what was then known as " Communion Sunday" (the first 
of the month) and the greater festivals. Except on some 
such occasions, the Gloria Patri^2& then used only at the 
end of each day's Psalms. Thank God ! owing to a greater 
appreciation of the obligations and privileges of Church 
membership, every Lord's Day now is almost universally 
known by the celebration of His own blessed Feast ! 

There are many other features of your parochial history 
which I myself would find very interesting to rehearse and 
discuss, but I forbear to do so for reasons already adduced. 
The relations of this sacred edifice to the events which 
preceded and followed the Declaration of Independence are 
too well known to find a place in this present discourse. 
The same may be said of its associations with the earlier 
history of our national Church, and with such Churchmen 
and patriots as White and Washington and Hopkinson and 
Morris and Franklin. And yet when we recall the unjust 
aspersions not infrequently cast upon the patriotism of our 
ecclesiastical forefathers, it may be well for us at such a time 
as this to recall the distinguished services rendered to both 
Church and State by many of those who worshipped here. 

The effort is frequently made to persuade the American 
people that this Church of ours was inimical to the struggle 
for national independence. While for conscientious reasons 
there were clergymen and laymen who, at the outset 
particularly, were opposed to the separation of the Colonies 
from the Motherland, it is but just to remember that George 
Mason, a Churchman, wrote the Declaration of Rights, 
which formed the basis for the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, written by Thomas Jefferson, another Churchman. 
Not less than two-thirds of all the signers of the latter 
declaration were Churchmen, and the same statement may 
be made concerning those who framed the first national 
constitution. 



58 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

I am very glad that, under the enthusiastic leadership 
of your energetic Rector, Christ Church has become more 
and more the recognized centre for religious observances 
that are connected with our national histor)'. This bi-cen- 
tennial commemoration affords a convenient opportunity 
of witnessing to the blessings which have for so many gen- 
erations found — humanly speaking — their mainspring here, 
and of expressing one's hearty desire that such blessings 
may continue hence to flow in steady course through the 
ages that are yet to come. 

The very position which this church-building occupies 
confers upon it a special duty and privilege of no mean 
significance. Standing as it does in the midst of the com- 
mercial thoroughfares of this great city, it testifies in itself 
to the sovereignty of Him Whose are the silver and the 
gold, reminding men as they go up and down within its 
shadow that, while they are not to be slothful in business, 
they are yet to be "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 
The sight of it, and the sound of its ancient bells must 
surely have their influence, and serve at times to admonish 
those who sell and buy among the many marts surrounding 
it of those maxims of equity and honesty which should 
govern them in their daily trade. 

Among the weakening changes resulting from the many 
removals to distant portions of the city, this church has 
yet a wide field for usefulness. It must ever be an ecclesi- 
astical centre of singular importance ; and we look forward 
confidently to its future annals as to those which shall 
record much additional and fruitful work for God and His 
Church. 

In your history Delaware must always feel an especial 
interest ; not only because we are such near neighbors, but 
also because, while we were still reckoned as " The Three 
Lower Counties of Pennsylvania," and even when we had 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 59 

achieved our State independence, we received the blessing 
that came from the occasional visits and the temporary 
oversight of your sainted Rector, Bishop White. And so 
in your commemorative services this year we may ask the 
place of kindred. Certain it is, we offer you our hearty 
congratulations and the assurance of our equally hearty 
prayers. 

You will, I am sure, permit me, in the same spirit of 
affectionate interest, to remind you how your parish is in 
an especial way a city set upon a hill, whose light is to go 
into many a darksome place. Think what might have 
been your own condition had not your ancestors left 5'ou 
the priceless legacy of the Christian faith. Think of the 
wretched condition of such as are to-day without such 
knowledge. It was, and still is, a mystery indeed, that 
was manifested to the Gentiles — long hidden in the coun- 
sels of God — that we should be " fellow heirs and of the 
same body and partakers of His promise in Christ by the 
Gospel." But it was a manifestation that shed a new and 
wondrous light upon all human life, and made those to 
whom it was revealed to rejoice and praise God as men 
had never done before : a light of cheerful hope and an- 
ticipation, the dawning of a better day, in which the king- 
dom of darkness should fail beforethe kingdom of Christ 
and of holiness, and the good news of His coming should 
go out into all the world. 

We do not as yet see this gracious purpose fulfilled, even 
in nominally Christian lands. Therefore, it is that to-day 
we ought especially to think ourselves bound to help by 
personal service and by every other legitimate agency in 
the diffusion of the Gospel and the advance of the kingdom 
of our lyord. 

By reason of the historical review in which we have 



6o Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

indulged this evening, we should be the more moved to 
earnestness in the cause. With all our fair speeches on 
the subject, we do not sufficiently appreciate how much we 
owe to the past. The very creed which we utter now with 
so much confidence was forged and framed by men who, 
after years of heroic experience, had reached its truth 
under the Spirit's guidance through the rich stores which 
the past had bequeathed to them. What a debt we owe to 
them, who did not think of this rich continent as a place 
merely to plunder, but a place to be evangelized with the 
precious doctrines of that same old creed ! What a debt, 
too, we owe to them who built us churches, established 
our kindly institutions, and adorned the land with their 
godly lives. 

After all, brethren, the good life is not the lonely contest 
we sometimes are disposed to think it ; not the anxious 
struggling through dangerous waves to the unknown shore 
on a lonely plank, saved as by a miracle out of a full ship. 
We believe in the communion of saints. And so to-day we 
reverently and gratefully remember those servants of God 
into whose labors we have so happily entered. We can 
almost see with our bodily eyes the cloud of witnesses who 
have worshipped in this very sanctuary. We ourselves are 
moving onward, consciously or unconsciously, fashioned 
largely by the influence of many lives ; and, in turn, affect- 
ing largely the character of many other lives. 

The Church, not as she was two hundred years ago, 
despised or simply tolerated, but honored and strong, is 
now recognized everj'where as one of the chief factors in 
the prosperity of every community. Her remarkable growth 
during the latter part of the present century is only what 
might have been anticipated when her unassailable claims 
should come to be fairly studied by our intelligent fellow 



Bi-Ceiitennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 6i 

countrymen.' Intrenched in their confidence, and well 
equipped as she is with what is required for the larger 
work to which our vast Republic is calling her, the outlook 
for the rapidly coming century is one of hopeful inspira- 
tion. We cannot but envy those who shall, at its close, be 
privileged to recount what may then be reckoned among 
her achievements. I know of no branch of the Catholic 
Church that has ever had a wider opportunity of manifest- 
ing the great truths which the incarnation of Christ has 
brought to light. May you in this parish, and all her 
members everywhere, be faithful to the high trust com- 
mitted to us ; making our daily lives a very Epiphany of 
the Gospel which has done such great things for us ; the 
Day Star from on high visiting our hearts by His Spirit, 
and guiding our erring feet into the way of eternal peace ! 



'It may not be amiss to add a few statistics in this connection : 

In 1844, the number of communicants of the Church was about 60,000. 
The whole population was about 6,000,000. The ratio of communicants 
to the population was then as i is to 300. 

In 1894, the number of our communicants was about 600,000. The 
whole population was about 65,000,000 The ratio of the one to the other 
was as I is to 108. In iifty years, the population increased 260 per cent, 
while the communicants increased 900 per cent. 

In 1832 there were 592 clergymen, including 15 bishops. In 1896, there 
were not less than 4500 clergymen, including 86 bishops. 

Should the same rate of gain be accelerated during the next four years 
as it has been in the latter half of the nineteenth centiu-y, it will not be 
long before we can, without challenge, speak of our ecclesiastical mother 
as indeed. The American Church. 



62 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21st. 



The day was ushered in with an early Eucharistic celebra- 
tion. At night a service was held under the auspices of 
Christ Church Historical Association. The church was 
crowded with persons from all over the Diocese. Two 
processions entered the church in succession, and took seats 
specially reserved. The first was composed of the Vestries 
of Christ Church, St. Peter's Church and St. James' Church, 
and the managers of Christ Church Chapel, and of Christ 
Church Hospital, together with lay members of the Stand- 
ing Committee of the Diocese, trustees of the various 
diocesan institutions, and Mr. Charles C. Harrison, Provost 
of the University of Pennsylvania, the latter wearing his 
official robes. The second procession was composed of 
about seventy vested clergy of the Diocese of Pennsyl- 
vania and other dioceses, including the Ven. C. C. Tiffany, 
D.D., Archdeacon of New York, the Rev. Benjamin Wat- 
son, D.D., President of the Standing Committee of the 
Diocese ; clerical representatives of all the diocesan insti- 
tutions ; the rectors of St. Peter's and St. James' Churches, 
and of all the principal churches of the city, the Rector of 
Gloria Dei Church, which from colonial days has been 
associated with Christ Church ; the Rev. Edward Riggs, 
Assistant Minister of Christ Church in charge of Christ 
Church Chapel ; the Rev. E. Gaines Nock, Rector's Assist- 
ant of Christ Church; the Rev. C. Ellis Stevens, LL.D., 
D.C.L., Rector of the parish; the Rt. Rev. William Ste- 
vens Perry, D.D., LL,.D., D.C.D., Bishop of Iowa, and 
Historiographer of the Church in the United States ; the 
Rt. Rev. Lemuel Henry Wells, D.D., Bishop of Spokane ; 
the Rt. Rev. Francis Key Brooke, D.D., Bishop of Okla- 
homa ; the Rt. Rev. Frederick Rodgers Graves, D.D., 



Bi-Cente7niial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 63 

Missionary Bishop of Shanghai, China ; and, bringing up 
the rear of the procession, the Rt. Rev. Ozi William 
Whitaker, D.D., Bishop of Pennsylvania. 

The choir was augmented for the occasion by the addi- 
tion of members from the choir of Christ Church Chapel. 
The Bishop of Pennsylvania presided, and delivered an 
address on " Christ Church and the Diocese of Pennsylva- 
nia." The Rev. J. Lewis Parks, D.D., Rector of St. 
Peter's Church, delivered an address on " Christ Church 
and the Daughter Churches." The Rt. Rev. the Bishop 
of Iowa, spoke on "Christ Church and the National Church." 
The addresses follow : 

ADDRESS OF BISHOP WHITAKER. 



I have been asked to say a few words concerning " Christ 
Church and the Diocese of Pennsylvania." No other 
church in the United States, perhaps no other church in 
the history of the world, has ever had so intimate a connec- 
tion with the Diocese which grew up around it, — certainly 
if compared with a Diocese of equal territorial extent, — as 
Christ Church has had to do with the foundation, the early 
growth and the development of the Diocese of Pennsylva- 
nia. Its formal connection with that Diocese began, of 
course, in 1785, when the organization of the Diocese took 
effect ; but it had to do with its early history ; from the very 
beginning it was a force operating throughout this region. 
It was an influence preparing the way for the Diocese 
which was to come. It was an encouragement in the estab- 
lishment of missions and parishes ; it was a beacon light 
guiding b}' its wisdom the management and conduct of 
these parishes and missions in the early history of the State. 

From 1695 to 1772, when the Rev. William White be- 



64 Bi-Centennial of Christ Chtirch^ Philadelphia. 

came the Rector of this parish, there were eight Rectors of 
Christ Church. Their history need not be entered into in 
detail in any discussion of this subject, and certainly not in 
one so brief as it is purposed to give at this time. But 
during that period Christ Church held on its way, exercis- 
ing its ministry and exerting an influence in the region 
around. Within that period there were established in this 
city, in close connection with Christ Church, St. Peter's 
and St. Paul's ; and in the country around, within the limits 
now embraced by the present Diocese of Pennsylvania, 
there was a line, a tier, of parishes organized, among which 
were Trinity, Oxford ; St. James', Bristol ; St. James', 
Perkiomen ; St. Peter's, Great Valley ; St. David's, Radnor ; 
St. John's, Concord ; St. Martin's, Marcus Hook, and St. 
Paul's, Chester. 

This line of outposts extended almost from the frontiers 
of this present Diocese, as if there had been a sort of fore- 
sight of what was to come, as if the efforts made for the 
establishment of the Church in this region during this 
time fell within these limits. There were organizations, 
indeed a number of them, made within the limits of the 
present dioceses of Central Pennsylvania and Pittsburg, but 
the most striking feature is the line of frontier outposts. 
And the fact that this church was here, that here a ministry 
was exercised, and that here a liturgy was observed, was 
an inspiring motive in the establishment of some these of 
parishes, and was a force entering into the congregations 
composing them : and they are indebted to Christ Church. 

In 1772, when Rev. William White became Rector of 
this parish, there began a history, extending through the first 
fourteen years of his rectorship, unparalleled in the history 
of the United States. As the nation, immediately following 
the Declaration of Independence and its establishment, 
passed through its period of greatest trial, so did the 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 65 

Church in the State of Pennsylvania. For several years 
Bishop White was the only minister, and his congregation 
the only congregation in the Episcopal Church in this 
region. But Christ Church held on its way, — most of the 
others were closed. The people were discouraged, they 
were disheartened in Church work, as they were in the 
affairs concerning their government and the prospects of 
the country. 

Here, in this place, gathered a body of men, — clergy and 
laity, over which the Rector of this church presided, — 
to hold the Primary Convention of the Diocese in 1784. 
William White was chosen president ; and the next year 
that body met as the Diocesan Convention and organized 
the Diocese of Pennsylvania. It seemed a small beginning. 
There were, I think, six clergymen present, three of whom 
resided in Philadelphia, and three represented country 
parishes. There were eight laymen, three of whom repre- 
sented parishes in this city, and five of whom came from 
the surrounding country. Several of the succeeding Con- 
ventions were of about the same proportions, — six, seven, 
eight, nine clergymen, and the same number of laymen or 
a little larger number, representing the parishes with which 
the}^ were connected. And so it was when, in 1786, 
William White was elected Bishop of the Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania. 

When he returned here in 1787 he became the Bishop 
of the Diocese of Pennsylvania ; and I wish to pause here 
to notice the wisdom which was exhibited in the delibera- 
tions of that Primary Convention and in the Conventions 
which followed in framing the organic law of the Diocese. 
If you compare what was done by these three or four first 
Conventions, more especially what was done in the first 
two, with our canon law as it exists to-day, you will find 
the germ of all that we have in that legislation that was 



66 Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

then adopted. It would seem as if the discerning mind of 
Bishop White looked beyond the surroundings of that 
time and anticipated what was to come, and had, even as 
the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the 
organizers of the Constitution of the United States, a fore- 
sight almost more than human in preparing an instrument 
capable of being adjusted to the growth and development 
that might come in after years. 

Bishop White, as you all well know, — and all these facts 
are doubtless known to all who are here present, — Bishop 
White continued as the Bishop of this Diocese a period 
of forty-nine years, until 1836. He lived to see the little 
Convention of six clergymen and eight laymen grow to be 
a diocese in which there were eighty-six clergymen and 
twenty-five candidates for orders, with representatives from 
all parts of the State ; a strong, united body, governed with 
that consummate wisdom which he always exhibited, — loyal 
to the Church of England, loyal to the truth of Jesus Christ. 

Here Bishop White was baptized, here he received his 
first Communion, here he exercised his ministry as Rector 
of this church for fourteen years, here he was chosen to the 
Episcopate, here he performed his first ordination, here his 
remains lie. We may almost say that in these early years 
Christ Church was the Diocese of Pennsylvania ; and we 
may say, from another point of view, that Bishop White 
was the Diocese of Pennsylvania. For there was an influence 
radiating from Christ Church and entering into the life of 
the Diocese which we can feel still ; and the Diocese of 
Pennsylvania owes a great debt to Christ Church. 

How shall that debt be discharged ? We certainly hold 
in grateful memory all those who were so identified with 
its organization, laymen and woman, ministers of the 
Church, Bishop, priests and deacons. And we would not see 
their work, we would not see that which formed the house 



Bi^Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 67 

in which their work was begun and carried on, we would 
not see it crumble into ruin, we would not see its energies 
decay. We all know what changes have taken place in 
this part of the city. We know how entirely the con- 
ditions surrounding Christ Church have changed. I do 
not suppose there are less people, less souls, within a radius 
of ten squares, than when it was filled with the elite, the 
cultured, the wealthy and refined of Philadelphia. Yet 
how greatly the character of the population has changed ! 
Some of the descendants of those families still maintain 
their connection with Christ Church, but the tide of busi- 
ness — which has swept westward with resistless force — is 
leaving Christ Church farther and farther behind the 
centres of influential population. 

Is it too much to think of this Diocese as providing for 
. Christ Church an endowment by which it shall be enabled 
to exercise its ministry amongst this working, tenement- 
house, laboring, poor population that is crowding this 
neighborhood and filling these streets ? Is not this the dic- 
tate of patriotism and of piety ? In reverence for the past 
and hope for the future of the Diocese, in recognition of 
Christ Church's early influence and continuing influence in 
the Diocese, there should be provided, in addition to the en- 
dowment which Christ Church already possesses, a sufficient 
increase to sustain this work. It is worthy of the considera- 
tion of Churchmen and Churchwomen, who hold to the 
traditions of the past, and who look forward with anticipa- 
tion and hope to the growth of the Church that is yet to be 
in this Diocese. And, indeed, we may all count it a privilege 
to live and labor for the Church of Christ and for our 
IvOrd Himself. 

I take great pleasure in presenting the Rev. Dr. Parks, 
the Rector of St. Peter's, who will speak of " Christ Church 
and its Daughter Churches." 



68 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 
ADDRESS OF REV. J. LEWIS PARKS, D.D. 



The Bishop of this Diocese has virtually called this 
church the mother of the Church of God in this Common- 
wealth. Even more than that I suppose it might be 
said without exaggeration that this church is truly the 
builder of the Church of God in the United States. But 
at any rate from her have emanated every organization 
ecclesiastical within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

It is particularly of her immediate family that I am to 
speak, and to bear to her their congratulations. She has, 
as I understand, three or four daughters. There is St. 
Peter's, St. James', and Christ Church Chapel — last born 
in her old age, and vigorous to the extent that it has now 
more communicants than this united parish had when 
Bishop White died. The daughters reflect the greatest 
possible credit, in my opinion, upon their mother. 

It is not very singular, if you will consider it, that even 
in the earliest times, under the political domination of the 
Friends, this church should have attracted to itself an 
increasing number of the cultured, and of the wealthy, 
and of the civicly influential of the laity of this great 
city of Philadelphia. This was so even in the beginning ; 
and it became still more so when the city, under the inde- 
pendent government, became the centre literary, and for 
awhile, the centre politically, of this country. 

As to the clergy, of course the daughters share with the 
mother for a long time, because for a long time they were 
united. And the clerical roll of the parish was a roll of 
scholars, of gentlemen, of God-fearing men. It was not 
unnatural that clergy of the Church of England, unoccu- 
pied and not desired at home, should seek occupation in 
the colonies ; and in the nature of things such pastors 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 69 

added little to the dignity or piet}' of the colonial Church. 
But the record of the clerical care of the parish of Christ 
Church, St. James' and St. Peter's has absolutely no stain 
upon it. Duche, Coombe, Jenney, Peters, are honorable 
names ; and perhaps for the same period in any other part 
of the colonies it would have been difficult — I say, perhaps, 
it would have been difficult — to render in all cases the same 
unqualified praise. Of the clergy of the chief of these 
daughters of Christ Church, I will speak in a moment. 
Of St. James' (for Christ Church Chapel is a baby yet and 
needs not to be spoken of), the clergy in old times left 
names identified with the religious life of the city, known 
to every Churchman of Philadelphia. Dr. Henry Morton, 
distinguished for his courtly urbanity, whose hospitality is 
still mentioned, and who was always ready to receive any, 
even to the youngest, of his brethren and shelter them, as 
they passed through the city ; and Nichols, whom you 
remember with the greatest regard, and whom you surren- 
dered with reluctance, that he might devote his energy, 
his exuberant fertility of plans, and his single-mindedness 
to the upbuilding of the great Diocese to which he was 
called. If you come to St. Peter's, the oldest daughter, I 
suppose we all understand that there is nothing like her 
list of clergy in a given space of years in any other parish 
we know of in this country. To pass on beyond the days 
of the united parish, from the time when St. Peter's separ- 
ated from her mother and became independent, there occur 
such names as De Lancey, a prince and a statesman ; 
Odenheimer, whose influence is felt to-day, long after he 
has been dead, — such a pastor that the grandchildren of 
his parishioners tell me of his instructions still ; then Leeds, 
of gracious godliness ; and lastly Davies, transferred to the 
administration of a great diocese of the Northwest. 



70 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

Even in the subordinate clergy- of the united parish were 
several remarkable men, — Muhlenberg, the seer of the 
clergy in this country, a man whose mind seemed to contain 
the germs of the great problems to the solution of which 
we are beginning to address ourselves to-day ; Kemper 
the great missionary bishop, and Milnor the orator. 

One may speak as proudly of the laity. The names of 
the laity run back into the most eventful times, and belong 
to the best of Philadelphia. As such they are well-known 
to Philadelphians ; but an outsider would find a great many 
names of national repute. Francis Hopkinson, a signer of 
the Declaration of Independence ; and James Biddle, who 
served under Preble and Bainbridge and Decatur and lay a 
year in the dungeons of Tripoli ; and Commodore Richard 
Dale, whose responses in the services partook of the vigor 
of his convictions, and were uttered in a voice that had 
been trained in breezy weather ; Horace Binney, of whom 
the notable thing I know, was his refusal of a justiceship 
in the Supreme Court of the United States, and his retiring 
in his full vigor from active life, — such was his anxiety 
lest he should be tempted to occupy a position which failing 
powers might disqualify him to fill ; Joseph R. IngersoU, 
minister to England ; Henry Reed, lawyer, professor, 
literateur, lost in the " Arctic " in 1854 ; and John Welsh, 
minister to England in these our days. 

Outside St. Peter's Church there are lying in her tombs 
men like Dallas ; a man who was, or might have been, 
Attorney -General, and was director of the old bank, minister 
to Russia, Vice-President of the United States and minister 
to England. And lastly, the greatest of all our naval 
heroes until you come to Farragut, the only man who 
compared with him, — Stephen Decatur, a man whose death 
left his friend Baron broken hearted for the remainder of 
his days. 



Bi~Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 71 

Now the daughters of Christ Church are still vigorous. 
St. James, with very timely, and I should not hesitate to 
say, very proper wisdom, transferred her site. Put by 
God's providence into a locality which makes her a future 
necessity, it is almost inconceivable that the western ad- 
vance of business will oust her from her present position of 
ministering to the cultered and wealthy, who need to be 
trained and ministered to that they may become the guides 
of cities. Of Christ Church Chapel and her position well 
nigh the same may be said. But old St. Peter's stands by 
her mother ; and while it is true of both mother and 
daughter that such is the singular attachment — and the at- 
tachment extends, I think, to the very children — which the 
descendants of the original worshippers entertain toward 
these two churches, that they still have a connection of 
some sort with them ; I think the congregations recognize, 
and I am persuaded they recognize it heartily and grate- 
fully, that their first and main duty is to the poor. There 
is no desire to mince or to conceal the fact that we are in 
the slums, and our duty is toward them. Both these 
churches are anchored stem and stern against the tide of 
change, not desiring to move ; having outgrown the temp- 
tation. Both have a dense humanity around them to be 
cared for in body and soul. The work has always been 
done. As soon as the changes began, there began also 
changes in the work secular as well as religious, — not 
merely secular for the religious but for the irreligious, — 
that by our works we might bring men to piety. 

The daughter has admirably prepared for this work 
among Christ's poor. She has a large and almost adequate 
endowment. She must have, she is getting, and will have 
half a million dollars. Already she has some two hundred 
thousand dollars in legacies and bequests ; but more she 
must have, and she will have more, for she cannot get along 



72 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

without it. When Bishop Odenheimer raised a storm by- 
putting a cross over St. Peter's, he had the felicitous wisdom 
to put the cross over the globe. And o\-er this quarter of 
the town these two churches must reign. 

The daughter churches bring congratulations to their 
mother to-night. They heartily believe that she ought to 
have, and must and will have the necessary endowment for 
her divinely given task ; that this great historical fane may 
be maintained to the instruction of this Diocese, and that 
the original parish of the city may go out and in among 
the poor day by day, ministering that Gospel which is pre- 
eminently the heritage of the little ones of the earth. 



ADDRESS OF BISHOP PERRY. 



It is to a cradle home of Church and country that we 
come to-night. Amidst the shrines and sepulchres of this 
land of ours there is no other spot so teeming with historic 
associations, so abounding in sacred memories. The ground 
on which we tread is holy ground. Reverently, lovingly, 
as pilgrims to some scene, fair to look upon, consecrated 
by faith and prayer and holy deeds, full of solemn memo- 
ries of the past, we remember as we tread these aisles our 
fathers trod, as we stand within these walls where gathered 
the great and good of the Church and of the country's past, 
the years of the right Hand of the Most High. For our 
fathers' God is our God, and shall be to remotest generations. 
We praise, we bless, we magnify His Holy Name for all that 
in His loving kingdom He has done for them and for 
ourselves. 

j\ly theme requires a volume for its full and fitting treat- 
ment. Bear with me while I touch briefly, on this anni- 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 73 

versary occasion, on the connection of this venerable Christ 
Church with the Church at large, the national historic 
Church of Christ in these United States. 

Answering with but brief delay, if not, indeed, antici- 
pating the State House bell, the peal of Christ Church 
rang out its proclamation, spiritual as well as temporal, of 
liberty to all the world, — liberty, civil and religious ; free- 
dom from alien potentate and power ; glad announcement 
of the birth of the free Church in and coincident with the 
birth of the free State. This is no empty boast. Ere the 
clanging tongues of Old Liberty Bell and the answering 
peal from Christ Church had ceased their ringing on the 
natal day of the nation, there was born a National Church ; 
and in response to the proclamation of the country's inde- 
pendence, the Rector, Churchwardens and Vestrymen of 
Christ Church met at the home of Parson Duche and freed 
from the Prayer Book services all mention of King or of 
royal family, of the high court of Parliament, of the 
nobility of England ; and, in short, of everything indi- 
cating subservience or allegiance to foreign domination, 
civil or ecclesiastical. It was by this brave act, by this 
repudiation, on the part of the newly freed and nationalized 
American Churchmen of any connection implying subordi- 
nation to the temporal or spiritual rule of England — Church 
or State — that the ties of long existing dependence and the 
recognition of years of loving, nursing care by the Mother 
Church of the children in the western world were severed ; 
and Church and State entered into independent life on one 
and the self-same day, July 4th, 1776. 

No other religious body can trace its origin to the very 
birth-throes of the nation. With the news of what had been 
done in the State House for civil freedom, that of the quick 
response from Christ Church's Rector and Vestry for ecclesi- 
astical liberty was borne to the northward to Parker, Rector 



74 Bi-Cente7tnial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

of Trinity Church, Boston, the leading spirit of the New 
England clergy. At the southward, on every side, the 
step taken by Christ Church was followed with alacrity ; 
and so with glad acceptance the independence of Church 
as well as State was recognized and assured. 

When the first step in the direction of Church autonomy 
was taken, this historic church numbered among its stated 
worshippers two-thirds of the members of the Congress 
which adopted the Declaration. The leaders in this move- 
ment for independence were Churchmen. John Morton, 
Churchman and vestryman at Chester, at that time a regu- 
lar worshipper at this Church and a communicant at this 
altar, gave the casting vote, placing Pennsylvania on the 
side of freedom, and making the newly-organized State the 
keystone indeed in the arch of American liberty. Dela- 
ware's vote, as the gifted poet Buchannan Read so vividly 
depicts it, was turned for freedom by Csesar Rodney's 
famous ride, and Csesar Rodney was a Churchman and a 
stated worshipper at Christ Church. This cradle-home of 
civil and religious freedem was the church of Washington, 
of Franklin, of Robert Morris, of Henry Laurens, of the 
great body of the men who in the halls of Congress made 
the State, and then modelled the economy of the Church 
after its pattern. 

The first step in the severance of the ties connecting the 
churches in America with the Mother Church of England 
was the act of this church's Rector, Churchwardens, Vestry- 
men and people. It is no wonder that when the war drew 
to a close, there appeared from the pen of the young patriot 
priest in charge as Rector of the united churches of Christ 
Church and St. Peter's the celebrated pamphlet entitled, 
"The Case of the Episcopal Churches Considered," 
written by the foremost ecclesiastical statesman of his day, 
a youth of thirty-six years, and containing among other 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 75 

wise suggestions the incorporation of the laity in the 
councils of the Church. 

And so it occurred that the men who framed the national 
government were associated in the even greater work, not 
of founding or framing a Church, — for the Church is from 
above and has one Head, one Founder, Christ our Lord, — 
but of rearranging and readjusting the economy of the 
Church as no longer dependent on the Church of England, 
but as a national church, American in every feature of 
outward organization, and yet in communion with and a 
branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. There 
exists the closest agreement between our constitutions, our 
conventions, our conciliar bodies, our general and diocesan 
organization, in short, our very vestries — the outward and 
visible machinery of our autonomy — and the principles and 
practice of the nation as formulated in its constitution and 
administration. It could not be otherwise, for the same 
men framed and fashioned each ; and each we reverently 
remember at this anniversary time. And so, when the war 
was over and the adjustment of our ecclesiastical machinery 
was being slowly, carefully, and with consummate skill 
evolved, it was in Christ Church that the first ecclesiastical 
synodical body convened, composed of laymen as well as 
of clergymen ; and not only was our general ecclesiastical 
constitution here enacted but the revision of the Prayer 
Book— at first, in the " Proposed Book," carried, it may be, 
too far, but resulting at length in the Prayer Book which 
served us for a hundred years and more. 

This very " Proposed Book " was here prepared, here 
used for the first time, here discarded ; and here the Stand- 
ard Prayer Book — only in 1892 superseded by a new 
■ " Standard" — was also prepared, and adopted for the cen- 
tury's use. The old Church books of Christ Church bear 
the indications of those use in those early revisions. They 



76 Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

enable us to trace the process through which the State 
Prayers of England were transformed into patriotic petitions 
for President, for Congress, and for the people of the 
United States. 

In this venerable Christ Church the measures were taken 
for securing for us the episcopate in the English line of 
succession. Gratefully, with every American Churchman, 
do we recognize the heroism of the Catholic Remainder of 
the Church of Scotland— despoiled, down-trodden, under 
disabilities by law — in giving to the great-hearted Seabury 
the consecration to his high office of first Bishop of Con- 
necticut, first American Bishop, first Bishop presiding in 
the American Church. But it was surely befitting, in view 
of what the Mother Church of England had done for us, 
that in the American line of succession from the Apostles, 
and through them from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, 
there should be had the line of Canterbury as well as that 
of Aberdeen. Had not Seabury succeeded in Scotland we 
may well believe with Parker of Massachusetts, that White 
or Provoost would have gained their quest in England. 
But thanks be to God, that within these walls the measures 
were taken and the way made easy for the communication 
of the Apostolical gift and grace through the hands of the 
Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England. 

And when the coveted gift was gained, when besides the 
great-hearted Bishop of Connecticut at his New London 
seat and See, there were in America as Bishops of the Angli- 
can line, the aimable and saintly White, first Bishop of Penn- 
sylvania, and the learned and militant Provoost, first Bishop 
of New York, it was in this church that the measures 
looking towards the union of the antagonistic churches of 
New England and those of the Middle and Southern States 
took form and shape. Here, in the early conventions, the 
records of which are among our costliest Americana to-day. 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Chiiixh^ Philadelphia. 77 

there were formulated the general ecclesiastical constitu- 
tions, which, after needed revisions, brought into fraternal 
union Seabury and his northern following with White and 
Provoost, the representatives of the churches of the Middle 
and Southern States. Here the first House of Bishops 
met. Here were arranged the measures for the continu- 
ance of the line of American succession. Here, after 
solemn prayers and with earnest sermons, the men who 
had been foremost in the framing of the government and 
the Federal Constitution found their labors called for and 
their prayers offered up to God, their toil, their interest 
and their sympathies excited, as they made, after debate 
and patient consideration, more fair, more stately, and 
more beautiful the city of our God on earth. 

Within these walls the communication of the three 
orders of the ministry as derived from the English line of 
succession began ; and not only priests, and deacons almost 
innumerable, but bishops have gone forth to minister the 
Word and sacraments to needy, perishing souls. From this 
sacred place there went forth, after years of acceptable 
service, the first Missionary Bishop of our Church, the 
sainted Jackson Kemper. It was fitting that one trained 
at the feet of White and receiving the apostolic commission 
from his hands should be the Church's leader in the host 
of self-denying and heroic bishops going East, West, North, 
South to evangelize the nations. Here in Christ Church 
where the first " act" of the General Convention recog- 
nized the duty of the newly-organized American Church 
to undertake the work of missions : — here where the 
utterances of the fervid, eloquent Doane, proclaimed the 
principle that every baptized member of the Church is a 
member of the Church's missionary organization and con- 
secrated to mission work and loving service, were our first 
miissionary efforts taken. Here, too, has been the begin- 



78 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

ning of nearly all, if not all, of our eleemosynary societies, 
our humanitarian efforts. 

Is it of patriotic impulses that we seek a fitting source? 
Where William White, the patriot chaplain of Congress, 
seeking this post of danger when Congress itself was fleeing 
from its foes, and where Blackwell, White's assistant or 
curate, also served, after spending as chaplain at Valley 
Forge that memorable winter of doubt and almost despair, 
we may well find the incitement to the love of country as 
well as of Church. 

Is it of hospital and other humanitarian work we would 
ask the beginning ? We find it here in Muhlenberg's ser- 
vice as the assistant, friend, loving disciple of White. 

Are we seeking the true source of our great theological 
school — the General Theological Seminary of New York ? 
Hobart was, indeed, the founder ; but the great Bishop of 
New York was trained and taught by William White, and 
from the very beginnings of this school, William White 
was its friend, its guide, the shaper of its fortunes. Here 
the work among the colored people had its start ; for 
William White ordained the first clergyman of color 
in this land. The suggestion of the Episcopal Academy 
was an inspiration of William White, and its first trustees 
were the Christ Chiirch parish officers and people. Christ 
Church had its intimate connection with the founding of 
the College and Academy of Philadelphia, now the noble 
University of Pennsylvania, which we may well believe 
has but entered upon the vestibule of its coming greatness. 
It is the same with Christ Christ Hospital, one of those 
gracious characters all the world must recognize and 
approve, which had here its start and springings to light, — 
and all this before the war which gave us freedom, civil 
and religious. 

This good work has ever gone on. From Christ Church, 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Chtirchy Philadelphia. 79 

as from " Siloa's brook," there has ever flowed stream after 
stream of beneficence, which have made glad the city of 
our God. Here, besides those we have already mentioned, 
De lyancey ministered and drank in from the lips of 
White the lessons of wisdom that great first bishop of 
Pennsylvania knew so well how to impart. May we not 
trace back to Christ Church the coming readjustment of 
ecclesiastical system, which White foresaw, when, like the 
Church Catholic of Christ throughout the world, we shall 
have provinces, primate, archbishops, and all the needed 
helps to our development. The " evangelical" of to-day 
will not forget that James Milnor here labored under the 
loving direction of the holy influences and gracious gifts 
of God to His Church attending the ministry of this gifted 
and godly man. 

But we may not thus go on, for were the remaining 
hours of the day to be occupied by our recital of the close 
connection of this sacred spot to the Church at large in the 
United States, we could only indicate a tithe of what is in 
our mind and almost on our lips. It is enough that in this 
celebration of two centuries of parish life, in this remem- 
brance of the years of the right hand of the Most High, 
we have the Church in the United States turning its sfaze 
upon us and rejoicing in this fitting eflbrt which we seek 
to make to the glory of God, and the memory of our fathers. 
Of this historic pile, of this holy ground on which we stand 
to-night, we may well cry out ^'' Esto perpetua V 

The generations yet to come shall gather here with love 
and reverance. May they with us thank God for the good 
example of the sires who here laid broad and deep the 
foundations of Church and country to the glory of God 
and the good of man. 



8o Bi-Centennial of Christ Ckurck, Philadelphia. 
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd. 



There was a celebration of the Blessed Sacrament at 1 1 
A.M. on this day, followed in the evening by a festival for 
parish workers in the Parish House. 



SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23rd. 



A celebration of the Eucharist at an early hour in the 
morning, was followed by a service at night for Church 
workers of the Diocese, at which were present delegations 
from parishes from all parts of the city. A sermon was 
preached by the Rev. William B. Bodine, D.D., Rector of 
the Church of the Saviour, Philadelphia, as follows : 

SERMON OF REV. DR. BODINE. 



Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and 
to wait for his Son from heaven. — i Thessalonians i: 9-10. 

I wish to begin this evening with the statement, which 
no doubt has been uttered by all who have spoken in this 
sacred place during the past week, that there is no church 
in America around which cluster so many hallowed asso- 
ciations as this Christ Church in this city of Philadelphia. 
There is no church so well fitted to be the shrine of united 
patriotic and religious devotion. And this pulpit in which 
I am now standing for the first time, what words it has 
heard; what scenes it has beheld ! How many golden utter- 
ances have gone forth from it during the past one hundred 
years ! Here William A. Muhlenberg preached his first 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 8i 

sermon ; here William White preached for the sixty years 
of his wonderfully wise and fruitful ministry ; here scores 
and even hundreds of the strongest and best men in the 
American Church have held forth the word of life. To- 
night we are nearing the close of a remarkable bi-centennial 
celebration, and in connection with this service I have been 
asked to speak to you. Of course I had no option in reply- 
ing to the request, which was, in itself, equivalent to a 
command. So in this place I stand, rejoicing in the past and 
hopeful for the future, as in the name of the Great Head of 
the Church I try to bring to you His message of peace and 
strength and salvation. 

The text just named has been chosen because the duty 
assigned to me has been that of speaking to you as a body 
of Christian workers, and I have aimed to select a passage 
of God's Word which not only speaks of service, but of the 
spirit in which it should be performed. St. Paul is here 
writing to the saints in the church of Thessalonica, and 
tells them with gladness of that great crisis in their lives 
when they turned to God from idols to serve the living and 
true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. In writ- 
ing thus he makes known to the Thessalonian followers of 
our Lord just what the Christian life upon the earth ought 
to be, vis.^ an earnest service of the living and true God 
coupled with an attitude of expectancy for the final triumph 
of the Son of Man, the two — the service and the sure 
expectation — fitting together as the halves of an apple, 
unitedly forming a rounded whole. The service of God 
during our pilgrimage below needs something to brighten 
it, the cheering and invigorating influence of hope. If a 
man works for God in the present without looking on in 
anticipation of the glorious triumph which is promised and 
sure to come, his work will sink to the level of drudgery ; 
and drudgery can never be the best kind of work. On the 



82 Bi-Ceniemtial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

other hand, if a man folds his "faithclad arms in lazy- 
lock," and does nothing but look for the establishment of 
Christ's kingdom of righteousness and peace, he becomes 
a mere dreamer, an idler, a sentimentalist. Of the two 
extremes, the latter is much the worse. It is the combina- 
tion of the two, their harmonious union which gives us the 
ideal experience for which we ought to be praying and 
towards which we ought to be climbing. 

No message is suited to this time and occasion excepting 
one which is practical. So let me speak to you concerning 
(I) the Christian's vocation ; (II) the Christian's attitude. 

(I) The Christian's vocation is "to serve the living and 
true God." For this partially he is left on the earth. He 
needs discipline that so he may be a pillar, finely polished, 
in the temple of our God. But in addition to this the 
Most High has a cause upon the earth, the cause of 
righteousness and peace and truth ; and that cause needs 
help, and God's will concerning his servants is that they 
should aid in every possible way in the furthering of that 
cause. How then can we best serve God? The duty 
being apparent, this becomes an important question. 

{a) We can serve God by the promulgation of His truth. 
According to the teaching of Sacred Scripture the range 
of the truth is extensive, its power vast. St. James writes, 
" Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth." 
St. Peter writes, " Seeing ye have purified your souls in 
obeying the truth." St. Paul writes, "God hath from the 
beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification 
of the Spirit and belief of the truth." And the "Holy 
One," greater than all Apostles and Prophets, even our 
L,ord Jesus Christ, has said, " Ye shall know the truth and 
the truth shall make you free," praying earnestly for His 
faithful followers, " Sanctify them through thy truth ; thy 
word is truth." From these united utterances it plainly 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 83 

appears that spiritual liberty, regeneration, sanctification, 
salvation are results wliicli flow from the right reception of 
the truth. When St. Peter preached the Word of God with 
boldness on the Day of Pentecost, he was serving God. 
When St. Paul reasoned in the synagogue of Thessalonica, 
when he stood on Mar's Hill, when he taught publicly and 
from house to house, he was serving God. So when St. 
John declared the love that God hath to us, and when still 
young through God's grace, though nearly five score years 
might have made him old, he simply repeated the ever 
inspiring message " lyittle children love one another ;" he 
was serving God. So with St. Thomas in Parthia, with St. 
Bartholomew in India, with L,azarus in Marseilles. They 
proclaimed the truth, and thereby served God. So Chrysos- 
tom and Gregory and Athanasius, and men of like spirit 
and power during the eighteen Christian centuries ! So 
the saintly men who have proclained the Word of the Lord 
on this side of the ocean, and in this Cit}^ of Brotherly 
Love during the two hundred years of the life of this 
honored parish ! 

But let us not forget that these men were merely leaders, 
and that a mighty host hath followed in their train. The 
Christian father, putting words of heavenly wisdom into 
the heart of his child ! The Christian mother, teaching 
her little ones the way of life and holiness ! The faithful 
Sunday-school teacher ! The members of the Brotherhood 
of St. Andrew doing their duty in prayer and manly effort ! 
The Girls' Friendly Society ! All who speak or write 
words of cheer and comfort, or who with accents of tender 
sympathy pour the oil of consolation into bruised and 
bleeding hearts telling of the Great Physician and the 
Holy Ghost the Comforter ! All men everywhere who 
wisely utter words of heavenly wisdom concerning repent- 
ance towards God or faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, or love 
to the brethren are thereby serving God ! 



84 Bi-Centennial of Christ Omrch^ Philadelphia. 

Nay, the whole truth is still larger even than this, for 
there is truth in God's world as well as in His Sacred 
Word. Sir Isaac Newton, gathering his pebbles upon the 
shore of the great ocean of truth, and using these pebbles 
for the good of his fellow-men, was thereby serving God. 
Christopher Columbus sailing westward to make known 
the glories of an undiscovered continent, was thereby serv- 
ing God. Our own Agassiz, having " no time to make 
money," but burning with desire to open the mines of 
golden truth, hidden in the rock or buried beneath the sea, 
and proclaiming the truth which he had learned through 
fish and beast and bird, was thereby serving God. And so 
wherever men are striving after truth in art, or literature, 
or philosophy, or science, and laboring to make known 
" the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," 
they are serving God. 

Of course there is a higher service and a lower service. 
Service in the realm of religion is higher than service in 
art or philosophy. Christ stands at the summit of all know- 
ledge. In Him are hid all the purest and noblest treasures 
of wisdom. L,et that be made emphatic ; but let it not 
obscure the statement that all truth seeking and all truth 
telling is a service of the living and true God. 

{p) We can serve God by our works of active benevolence. 
When we relieve the oppressed, or deal our bread to the 
hungry, or clothe the destitute, or visit the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, we are thereby serving God. 

With the circumstances of our modern life pressing 
about us, many Christian men and women in our cities are 
debarred from the privilege of doing much of this truly 
Christian work in a direct way ; and this is no doubt to 
their spiritual loss. For their growth in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ they ought to be doing 
some of it — the more the better. But when the difSculties 



Bi- Centetmial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 85 

thicken in the way of direct Christian activity through 
actual contact with the poor and suffering, something can 
be done by those who are " rich in this world's goods " 
through the free, glad outpouring of their earthly treasure. 
Time is power ; money is power also, for money is simply 
a representative of other values. It is time condensed, 
energy compressed, toil forced compactly together and 
crowded into limits easily controlled. It will not do there- 
fore for men or women, whose are the associations of 
luxury, to say "I cannot be caring for the sick and ne- 
glected ; I cannot be looking up poor, ragamufi&n children 
all day long — I hav'nt the time." In one sense yes, in 
another sense no ; you may have the time in the dollars 
which you count your own. And just as you get your 
bonnets or your coats with your money, just so with your 
money you may undo many a heavy burden, and let many 
oppressed go free. 

Many years ago a Christian laymen said to me, " It seems 
absolutely essential that my time shall be given to my 
business. I wish that I could do this direct Christian work, 
but apparently I cannot. But measurable business pros- 
perity is mine, so I can afford to pay somebody to do work 
for me as a 'substitute.' If I cannot fight at the front, I 
can support somebody whilst struggling there. Can you 
recommend to me a suitable person?" The person was 
found, and the work done. And what gladness shone in 
that counting-room in consequence ! 

Personal activity in labors of Christian benevolence 
brings to the laborer the fruit of richest perfection. But 
this other kind of labor, through money freely offered in 
Christ's name, counts also. So let us all serve God through 
our labors of genuine benevolence. 

(c) We can serve God by the cultivation of Christian 
graces. Never did John Milton tune his lyre to sing more 



86 Bi-Centen7iial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

wisely, or with more strength and beauty, than when he 
wrote that immortal sonnet upon his own blindness, in 
which he says : 

" God doth not need 
Either man's work, or his own gifts ; Who best 
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best : His state 
Is kingly : thousands at His bidding speed 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

Yes, we serve God by toil and by waiting also, and the 
one service may be as important and rich in blessing as 
the other. The poor, tired, suffering saints who sit in loneli- 
ness and wait upon beds of pain and anguish sometimes say 
mournfully, "What can I do in the way of service? I am 
cut off" from that." Nay, my brother, that may be opening 
to you in the very highest way. 

" Birds by being glad their Maker bless, 
B3' simply shining sun and star ; 
And we, whose law is love, serve less 
By what we do than what we are." 

Henry Martyn was wont to say " the power of gentleness- 
is irresistible." The power of patience ! with what glory 
it shines, and how hearts are touched by it as with the 
flashing rays of heaven ! So let us keep constantly in mind 
the certain fact that every time we check a hasty word in 
its utterance, every time we throttle an unlawful thought, 
every time we crush an unholy desire, we are serving God ; 
every time we hew a timber, every time we polish a corner, 
every time we lift aloft a stone in the sacred temple of love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance, we are thereby serving God. And thus 
all men and all women can be laborers together with God. 
The silent and the active can alike ply their Christian voca- 



Bi-Centen7iial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 87 

tion. The resolute and heroic toiler and the meek and 
lowly sufferer can both serve the living and true God. 
And opportunities abound, for 

" The common round, the daily task 
Will furnish all we ought to ask 
Room to deny ourselves, a road 
To bring us daily nearer God." 

(II). And now as to the other side of the Christian life, 
the bright and joyous side, that which gleams with the 
light of expectation. "Ye turned to God from idols to 
serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son 
from heaven." 

That Christ should come again to judge the living and 
the dead was the faith of the early Church. It is the faith 
of the Church to-day. How He may come we may not 
definitely say. We only know that He will come, and 
that every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced 
Him. And the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of 
Him. Our outward eyes may behold Him, or they may 
not. He may be visible only to the spiritual sight within. 
The essential thing to believe and know is that He will 
come with power and great glory ; that He will appear on 
earth as the avenger and destroyer of every wrong, and this 
is the name by which He shall be called " The I^ord our 
Righteousness. " " In His days shall the righteous flourish, 
and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth." 

This is the Christian's hope. And it is no small matter. 
It is a hope which covers the earth, and takes in the eter- 
nities. A hope which brings life and immortality to light, 
abolishing forever sin and suffering and death, — "a good 
hope through grace." 

Not very long ago in the most popular of the daily jour- 
nals of the city of London there appeared the following 
statement : " Agnostics and Secularists who think that we 



88 Bi^Ce7itcnnial of Christ Clmrch^ Philadelphia. 

have only one life do not build hospitals or go as Sisters of 
Charity among the poor. IvOgically one might suppose 
that the persons who expect happiness beyond this earth 
would ignore earthly unhappiness, believing it of no import- 
ance comparing it with the bliss to come. It never has 
been so, however, at any stage of the world's history. 
Giving to the poor has been the outward and visible sign 
of inward and spiritual faith, even before the rise of 
Christianity. We suppose that out of every hundred 
pounds given to charity in England to-day ninety-five 
come from religious men and women." 

This statement is doubtless true. Faith, hope, love, 
these are the Christian virtues. And the love glows all 
the more brightly because of the gladdening rays which 
come from faith and hope. 

That Christ's reappearing will be accompanied with 
mighty social convulsions seems clear beyond question. 
He comes to make an end of sin, and to bring in ever- 
lasting righteousness. Of course His coming must be an 
act of judgment. If wrongs are to be put away with a 
strong hand, the wrong-doer must suffer. If evil is to be 
ended forever, the evil-doers must go down in an agony of 
defeat in the last dread conflict. This the early Christians 
knew. But they looked beyond the terrors of the final 
day to the glorious vision which entranced them, wherein 
they beheld a redeemed creation, a better country, a new 
heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
That hope held them as an anchor of the soul when the 
sea and the waves were roaring with the loud rush of per- 
secutions. That enrapturing prospect filled them with joy 
unspeakable and full of glory. 

So let us look up and on. So let us never grow weary 
in well doing, for we shall reap if we faint not. Let us 
humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God that He 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Chzirch^ Philadelphia. 89 

may exalt us in due time. Let us be diligent that we may 
be found of Him in peace without spot and blameless. Let 
us live as in His presence, our conversation being in heaven, 
from whence also we look for the Saviour. 

This then is the Church's message to Christian workers 
delivered from this sacred place upon this most memorable 
occasion. Your mission is to serve the living and true 
God. That you may do this successfully, be sharers of 
His spirit. He is the God of truth. Be true, absolutely 
true, in all your earthly relations. Be alive also ! " More 
life and fuller 'tis we want." Let His life quiver within 
you. So shall you have both peace and power. And then 
besides wait for His Son from heaven. " Be patient, there- 
fore, my brethren unto the coming of the Lord." There 
will be hours of discouragement, but remember that the 
sun is behind the clouds. There will be times of difficulty 
and danger. Wait in sure and certain hope. 

" Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written 
for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of 
the Scriptures might have hope." " Cast not away there- 
fore your confidence which hath great recompense of 
reward, for yet a little while and He that shall come will 
come, and will not tarry." 

Revelation is light, and the light brings with it a glori- 
ous and enduring hope. Hope on then, hope ever ! Believe 
this gospel of hope. So shall you be workmen having no 
need to be ashamed. In the pews where you are sitting 
George Washington worshipped God, Benjamin Franklin 
pondered the ways of God to men, and Robert Morris 
learned the way of heroic self-sacrifice. 

Here Bishop White preached the gospel of hope. Our 
fathers builded wisely and well. They believed in God, 
and so became His servants. They trusted Him, and so 
were strong to do the right. In the darkest hour of their 



go Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

lives, and of our nation's life, tlieir hope kept alive the 
flickering flame of zeal. And so may you be quickened 
more earnestly than ever " to serve the living and true God 
and to wait for His Son from heaven." 



SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24th. 



The Octave of services was completed by a service com- 
memorating Christ Church and the Dioceses that have 
grown out of it. This service began at 11 a.m. and ended 
with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The preacher 
was the Rt. Rev. Cortlandt Whitehead, D.D., Bishop of 
Pittsburgh. His sermon was as follows : 



SERMON OF BISHOP WHITEHEAD. 



That those things which cannot be shaken may remain. — Hebrews 
xii, 27. 

Two hundred years is a long period in the history of 
anything American. And there are not many organizations 
or institutions this side the Atlantic, not even our govern- 
ment itself, which can at the present or in the near future 
celebrate their bi-centennaries. 

All the more noteworthy is it that we are called to-day to 
a festival observance which witnesses to the pre-eminent 
age of this parish among the venerable things of Philadel- 
phia, and indeed of the United States. 

Noteworthy, too, that the festival is ecclesiastical, bear- 
ing testimony to the quality of permanence in religion, a 
quality which, like salt, has preserved and purified what 
otherwise might easily have been corrupted. For we must 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Pkiladelphia. 91 

not forget that we are called to celebrate the bi-centennial 
of an organization absolutely identical throughout all its 
histor}', unchanged in all things, altered not one whit in 
essential point since the beginning. Its witness has been 
borne throughout its long and honorable career, and that 
without hesitation, or compromise, to those principles on 
which it was founded. Faithfully have all its rectors 
upheld " Evangelic Truth and Apostolic Order." L,oyally 
have its people acknowledged the same. Our Service 
to-day is identical (without the change of more than a few 
words) with that which was read b}'' the Rev. Mr. Clayton, 
and shared by his congregation, two hundred years ago. 

Do you say there is little noteworthy in that ? 

I answer that two hundred years is by no means too 
short to accomplish great changes even in ecclesiastical 
affairs. Witness the merging of the old Swedish churches 
in Delaware and Pennsylvania into the Anglican Church. 
Witness what seems to us the betrayal of King's Chapel, 
Boston, to an alien body. Witness in the same latitude a 
few generations ago the rapid defection of orthodox con- 
gregations one after the other to Socinianism. Witness 
alterations, even in the essentials of the faith within the 
last generation, by the Church of Rome. Witness the 
shifting of various denominations since the Reformation, 
and their increasing discord with their own formularies 
and confessions before our very eyes to-day. 

The two hundred years of this parish's existence have 
sufl&ced for the inauguration and spread of the great Wes- 
leyan body, and its disintegration already in several kinds 
of Methodists. Within the same period have arisen 
various kinds of Presbyterians, instead of the one staid and 
well-settled communion to be found here two centuries 
ago. Other numerous instances could be given. So that 
it is indeed worthy of note that we celebrate the anniver- 



92 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

sary of something permanent and imchangeable, grown 
indeed from infancy to maturity, but maintaining the 
same features in the adult as in the child, possessing the 
same organs and exercising the same powers, only brought 
on further towards perfection. 

It becomes pertinent then, and will not be unprofitable 
to inquire what are those elements in the life of this parish 
which have contributed and do now contribute to its per- 
manent establishment, growth and influence. What ele- 
ments have made it a fountain of help and encouragement 
beyond its own borders? What has enabled it to be a 
mother church, so that children from afar come (as I do 
this day from beyond the Alleghenies) to offer gladly their 
congratulations and render their grateful acknowledg- 
ments? What are "the things that cannot be shaken?" 
What are the things which, therefore, despite all vicissi- 
tudes " shall remain," as they have remained? 

We look around our modern denominationalism ; we see 
chiirch built against church, altar reared against altar, con- 
gregations divided on some question of method or of ritual ; 
the various kinds of Presbyterians all holding the same 
views as to the parity of the ministry, and as to the mode 
of conducting divine worship, all upholding in the main 
the same doctrine, but divided on some secondary matter, 
concerning which the adherents themselves very often have 
not a very clear intelligence. Several kinds of Baptists, 
all holding very much the same faith, all practicing the 
same immersion ; several kinds of Methodists united in 
their zeal, and in their reverence for their founder, but 
separated on some minor detail of government, or of prac- 
tice. Little sects here and there, keeping up a vigorous, 
and sometimes a sort of galvanic life, by virtue of adher- 
ence to some one or two doctrines considered most import- 
ant, and which, being magnified beyond all proportion, ' 



Bi-Centennialof Christ Church, Philadelphia. 93 

claim the loyalty, even unto death, of those who rally round 
them. And one cannot help wondering what must be the 
effect of all this difference of opinion, what shall be the 
ultimate result :— Is the house thus divided against itself to 
come to desolation ? Is Christianity doomed to be a dismal 
failure because men cannot agree about these thincrs? 
Must there necessarily be before our Presbyterian brethren 
for instance, the dark prospect of utter ruin, because just 
now there is a difference of opinion as to the advisability 
and method of revising the Confession of Faith ? 

Almost every one answers such questions in the negative 
simply because, by a sort of intuition, we recognize that 
these are not the essential things. We must fain confess 
that Christian disciples are divided by matters that are of 
small importance when compared with those things which 
" cannot be shaken," and which " remain." Thoir^^h there 
should be ten times more difference of opinion and ques- 
tioning on the part of the various portions of the great 
company of disciples, though there should be far more 
division than at present, and far more difference of adminis- 
tration, and of belief, we should be compelled to assert that 
the Christian religion would still make progress, as it has 
m the past, notwithstanding the many divisions arising 
since the English Reformation. We believe that the ulti- 
mate triumph of Christ is assured, in spite of all these bar 
riers and hindrances, because, by a sort of intuition, we look 
past these things to Christ Himself, and recognize the eter- 
nal vigor of His conquering arm, and believe that He shall 
be more than conqueror at the last. 

And that these things are only secondary, is witnessed by 
the fact that Christian people work together, pray together 
]om hand m hand in many enterprises, and thus recognize 
the underlying unity ; as when one stands upon the broad 
earth, bearing all its teeming millions, and feels the pulse 



94 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

of the one humanity, even though family and clan and 
nation be separated one from the other by walls and bar- 
riers. It is a curious, and indeed a sad spectacle, Christian 
people thus composedly and all unconsciously accusing 
themselves of foolishness in caring more for secondaray 
things than for the great privilege and duty of peace and 
concord and unity. 

The hope of Christianity lies in this, that more and more 
each year, disciples of Christ, feeling the unwisdom and 
the crime of many divisions, will turn their thought to 
those things which unite us in one bond of fellowship. 
For we all feel instinctively, that when the L,ord shall come 
again in His glory, when we look at things terrestrial from 
the other side of that great event, when we come to esteem 
things at the value which eternity shall give them, almost 
all these matters which now separate us will seem infiinites- 
imally small in comparison with the awful verities which 
are infinite and eternal. 

I want to speak this morning about those things which 
in the view of this Church " cannot be shaken," the things 
upon which we all ought to be agreed, rather than the 
things upon which we are divided ; the things for which, 
as we believe, this venerable parish has stood through all 
its history. If we would listen to their voices, the divisions 
of Christendom, as we sincerely believe and claim, would 
speedily disappear. 

Our House of Bishops, in laying down in a solemn for- 
mula, that which they held to be a sacred deposit, put in 
trust for all the centuries, have enumerated four great 
fundamental y«c/j-, upon which alone any true reunion can 
be gained, or, as they expressed it, progress might be made 
towards unity. First of all, the Word of God, as the 
inspired revelation of God's will to man. Next, the Apos- 
tles' and Nicene Creeds, as the sufficient embodiment of 



Bi-Centeniiial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 95 

Christian belief. Third, the two great Sacraments insti- 
tuted by Christ Himself ; Baptism and the Supper of the 
Lord. And fourth, that Historic Episcopate, which 
witnesses to the corporate and visible continuance of the 
Gospel in the world, since the beginning. 

As the geologist from one single bone can build up the 
structure of an animal extinct, so from these four facts, can 
the thoughtful and intelligent Christian elaborate and fill 
out the form of the Christian Church of the future. Our 
Bishops mentioned these four principles because they 
believed them to be unshakable in the future as they have 
been in the past. They will outlast all the changes and 
chances of time, as they have outlasted until now ; they 
are the foundation rocks upon which it would be safe to 
build ; there is no shifting sand underlying them, they 
imply very much more than they express, and their con- 
sideration leads us back to the very beginning of things. 
For you will notice that the four are all of them Institutions., 
outward and visible — the Word of God, the Nicene Faith, 
the Sacraments, and the Ministry. They are all outward 
and visible signs which announce an inward and spiritual 
grace, they all point to truths far beyond themselves. We 
learn from them the great truths of God's existence, His 
personality. His mind and heart turned towards the 
creatures of His hand, so that He would communicate 
Himself to them by holy men, moved to speak or write 
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thereby it has 
been possible to glean from their speech first, afterwards to 
be attested by their writings, a clear and definite statement 
of that which is most essential to believe, that which we 
call the Catholic Faith, which except a man accept impli- 
citly., if not explicitly, " he must without doubt, perish 
everlastingly." In the two Sacraments, God does not 
reveal Himself, but communicates Himself to men, receiv- 



96 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

ing them into the manifest relation of sonship, and nour- 
ishing them unto everlasting life. And the Ministry has 
its triple duty of explaining the will of God, proclaiming 
that will as it has always been received by the historic 
Church, and conveying God's grace to men by the pledges 
which God Himself has ordained. 

They all imply the existence of a body called the Church, 
the society of which the ministry is a constituent part, 
which Christ Himself ordained, and to which He has 
promised His presence, even unto the end of the world — 
the society to which His Word was given, by which the 
Faith was declared, and in which the Sacraments are duly 
administered by the authorized messengers of God. 

It seems to us that these four institutions stand or fall 
together. Take any one of them away and the others are 
irretrievably weakened. The city must stand " foursquare," 
in order to be solid and permanent. Moreover, each of 
these principles includes all the rest ; for the Word of God 
certainly witnesses to the true Faith, to the Holy Sacra- 
ments, and to the authorized Ministry. . The Faith is 
witnessed to by the Holy Scriptures, and maintained in the 
Sacraments, and proclaimed by the Clergy. The Sacra- 
ments would be of no meaning unless they proclaimed the 
true doctrines, which are emphasized in the Holy Scriptures, 
and formulated in the Creed, and are administered by those 
holding Christ's commission. And surely the Ministry 
would have no basis to stand upon, were it not that Creed, 
and Scripture, and Sacraments all cry out for the personal 
witnesses who alone can make them effective in the world, 
from generation to generation. 

These things, then, it seems to us, are the things which 
cannot be shaken ; these the things for which witness has 
been borne in this parish for the last two hundred years. 
How is it possible to conceive of a permanent system of 



Bi- Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia, 97 

Christianity that should leave any one of them out? 
Such a system would be certainly cut-oflF from connection 
with the past ; and would be an entirely new thing, and 
because new, false. The rapid disintegration of the various 
denominations during the comparatively short time since 
the Reformation, should cause their adherents to ask most 
diligently what that element of disintegration is. Some- 
thing is lacking in their constituent qualities, else it is 
impossible that they should so easily and so frequently be 
" shaken.'''' For it must never be forgotten that co7itinuity 
of life is as necessary to identity of life in the Church, as 
in human experience. If to the Church at the beginning, 
Christ gave His promise of presence and blessing even 
unto the end of the world., it is clear that there must be 
continuity of actual fact, or else the Church of the nine- 
teenth century can have no right to its claim to be the 
Church of Christ which started out in the first century. 

Whatever were the features of the infant, must be, how- 
ever modified by circumstances, and by time, still the same 
features in the man. Whatever contour the Church had 
at the beginning, it ought to have, however ennobled and 
developed, at maturity. If heart and lungs and various 
senses were necessary for perfection at the outset, the same 
organs are necessary for perfection later on. The constant 
references in the Scriptures, to a body, and to life in the 
body, give us a strong claim on the attention of those to 
whom we come, urging the identity of the Church of the 
nineteenth century, with that which started out on the first 
Easter Day, with the glorious commission to claim the 
world for Christ. Who shall gainsay the assertion that the 
Word of God in its fullest and freest sense, not merely as 
written words, but as held and believed and taught, was the 
possession of the Church at the very earliest movement? 
Who shall deny that in the same way, a certain divine 



98 Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

faith was formulated and held, even on that first great 
occasion when thousands were baptized into the Name 
of and therefore into the belief in, the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost ? Who can fail to understand that 
from the very outset the great sacraments of Baptism, 
and of the Lord's Supper, were constantly observed? 
Nothing is clearer than that certain men, commissioned 
with their high ambassadorship, went hither and thither 
into all the known world, preaching the Gospel and the 
things that they had learned, conveying them to others 
that they might teach and preach the same. 

Now our Church, and the whole Anglican Communion, 
assembled by its representative Bishops, in the Lambeth 
Conference, has clearly announced its firm belief in the en- 
during nature of these four institutions, and in the great 
truths for which they stand. And what is more, the whole 
Christian world can hardly fail to accept in due time that 
testimony, because it is in harmony with the testimony 
well-nigh unbroken of all the Christian centuries. The 
more thought and discussion there are given these four 
points, the more certainly shall all intelligent and well 
instructed Christian people give their adherence to them. 
These things which cannot be shaken, will remain. They 
form the backbone, or rather the warp and woof of Christ- 
ian teaching, as regards Christianity as an Institution ; and 
all other things, however important, are, after all, second- 
ary to these. And it will become more and more mani- 
festly absurd for sober Christian men and women to remain 
divided in various sects and denominations, when, concern- 
ing fundamental principles, the immense majority of all the 
past and of the present as well, are so thoroughly at one. 

How insignificant appear controversies and misunder- 
standings about organs, and robes, and adornments, and 
confessions, when we look with unprejudiced eyes at the 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 99 

noble grandeur of such things as those of which we have 
been speaking. Let us remember that many of the things 
which now engage our attention, will seem in the great 
day of the Lord, utterly unworthy of a moment's consider- 
ation. 

Two or three things ought to be especially emphasized 
as the duty of intelligent Christian people in these days : 
First, ought we not to try and school our minds to discrimi- 
nate between the essential and the accidental, between that 
which is necessary, and that which is proper, or beautiful, 
or expedient? There is as much mental strabismus and 
astigmatism as physical ; probably more. We forget that 
we all see spiritual things as in a glass, darkly, and there- 
fore it behooves us to be the more careful in forming our 
estimate, and not to be too hasty in judgment, or partial 
or prejudiced in our ultimate view of things. Secondly, 
and as a part of that of which we have been speaking, 
ought we not to educate ourselves in good nature., looking 
with good-humored charity and tolerance upon the things, 
most of them non-essential and secondary, in which our 
brother differs from us ? If he must sing Psalms, let us not 
revile him for it If he cares for lights and vestments, let 
us be equally indulgent. If he worships God in one fashion 
and we in another, let us not magnify his peculiarities, and 
esteem him the less because of them. Let us look with 
kindly eyes on mankind in general, and not at ourselves in 
particular. The superciliousness that disdains one's neigh- 
bor, simply because he differs (although such supercilious- 
ness is often found as a characteristic of those who profess 
to be broad-minded), is totally opposed to the spirit of 
Christianity. Do you not remember how our Lord was 
circumcised, not for Himself, but for others, and because it 
was, by others, considered proper and right ? Was He not 
baptized, not for Himself, but " to fulfill all righteousness," 



lOO Bi-Ceiitennial of Christ Churchy Philadelphia. 

and to adapt Himself to the prejudices simply of those 
among whom He came ? Did He not say to Peter : — " I^est 
we should displease them, let us pay tribute ? " How un- 
like His loving temper is that which separates from another, 
simply because he differs ; the temper that is slow to make 
allowance. 

But all this has to do with our treatment of our brethren 
individually^ as fellow-disciples of our common Lord. 
When we come to our attitude towards the essentials of the 
Faith, the Christian Church as an Institution, a vessel to 
convey the knowledge of God and the grace of God to the 
successive generations of men, then we must heed the 
exhortation : " Be watchful, and strengthen the things 
which remain." We must see to it that we, for our part, 
build up ourselves in the most holy Faith, growing stronger 
every day in our appreciation of that which is indeed the 
truth, " earnestly contending for the faith which was once 
for all delivered to the saints" — seeking that grace by 
which alone our lives can be brought into conformity with 
that truth, and daily making progress in the divine life, 
and "growing up unto Him in all things, which is the 
Head, even Christ." 

Here, the truest tolerance is that which, while it con- 
fesses the liberty of all, nevertheless, holds fast most firmly 
to its own heritage of faith, holding nothing dearer than 
loyalty to that truth which God has revealed to itself. 
Then when at the last, all the scaffolding shall drop away, 
when all that which has been secondary shall take its 
proper place, that which " cannot be shaken^'' shall indeed 
"remain," the assurance and promise to us that we have 
built upon the true foundation. Though the winds and 
waves may beat upon the structure which has been reared, 
it shall not fall, for it is founded upon the rock. 

Therefore, at the close of two centuries of steadfast 



Bi-Centennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. lOi 

witness-bearing, this venerable parish still feels the pulsing 
of her vigorous life, still maintains her courage, still holds 
aloft with steady arm and undaunted heart the banner of 
the ancient faith, knowing that it shall surely conquer in 
the end ; and to her the exhortation comes : " Be watchful, 
and strengthen the things that remain." 

Brethren, you may well remember the words which 
immediately follow our text, " Wherefore, we receiving a 
kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby 
we may serve God acceptably with reverence and o'odly 
fear." 

This connects the past with the future, it enjoins in the 
centuries to come like fidelity to that displayed in the 
centuries past. Your predecessors preserved the true 
principles of the Catholic religion unshaken. Ours they 
are to-day. 

" Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be 
shaken, let us have grace whereby in all the coming years 
we may offer service acceptable to God with reverence and 
godly fear." 

And if you ask me, what can we do this very day ? I 
answer, surely, on this and every occasion when the Holy 
Communion is celebrated you can pray as you never have 
done heretofore, in some such words as are commended to 
us in the two hundred and thirtieth hymn : 

" For all Thy Church, O Lord, we intercede ; 
Make Thou our sad divisions soon to cease ; 
Draw us the nearer each to each, we plead, 
By drawing all to Thee, O Prince of Peace ; 
Thus may we all one Bread, one Body be 
Through this blest Sacrament of Unity. 

"We pray Thee, too, for wanderers from Thy fold ; 

Oh, bring them back, Good Shepherd of the sheep, 
Back to the faith which saints believed of old, 
Back to the Church which still that faith doth keep ; 
Soon may we all one Bread, one Body be. 
Through this blest Sacrament of Unity. 



I 

N,' 



caoo- 



1 02 Bi-Cetitennial of Christ Church, Philadelphia. 

" So, Lord, at length when Sacraments shall cease, 
May we be one with all Thy Church above, 
One with Thy saints in one unbroken peace, 
One with Thy saints in one unbounded love ; 
More blessed still, in peace and love to be 
One with the Trinity in Unity." 



On the afternoon of Sunda)', November 24th, a patriotic 
service was held under the auspices of the Society of 
Colonial Wars, of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
with the presence of representatives of the Society of the 
Cincinnati, the Sons of the Revolution, the Colonial Dames 
of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, 
the Society of the War of 181 2, the Military' Order of 
Foreign Wars of the United States, the Naval Order of the 
United States, etc. His Excellency, General Daniel H. 
Hastings, Governor of Pennsylvania, and other State 
officials ; His Honor, Charles F. War^vick, Mayor of Phila- 
delphia, Major-General George R. Snowden, Commander- 
in-Chief of the State troops, and members of his staff, in 
uniform, occupied the Washington Pew, and the Penn 
Family Pew. The church was decorated throughout with 
the American national colors, and above the altar were 
draped the English and American flags. The music was 
rendered by members of the Eurydice and Orpheus Societies 
of Philadelphia, accompanied by organ and instrumental 
pieces, under the direction of Mr. Michael H. Cross, choir- 
master of the Church of the Holy Trinity. The Service 
was conducted by the Rev. C. Ellis Stevens, I/Iy.D., D.C.Iv., 
Rector of the church, as Chaplain-General of the national 
Society of Colonial Wars, and of the Military Order of 
F'oreigu Wars of the United States. The sermon was 
preached by the Rt. Rev. William Stevens Perry, D.D., 
IvIy.D., D.C.L,., Bishop of Iowa, as Chaplain-General of 
the Naval Order of the United States, and of the Society 
of the Cincinnati. 



